Tag Archives: space

Space exploration and colonisation: US, China, Russia and others | TheCable – TheCable

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Space exploration is dynamic and developments have been ongoing over the years with several countries actively engaged in space exploration; and have demonstrated interest in the long-term goal of space colonization. Three prominent countries at the fore of space exploration and showing interest in colonization include the United States, China, and Russia.

The United States, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), has played a lead role in space exploration since when it was established in 1958. They have a rich history of crewed space missions, which included the Apollo moon landings. In recent years, NASA has paid more attention to projects some of which are:

These are just a few, and NASA is working on various other scientific missions, technological advancements, and international collaborations. For the latest updates and detailed information, its recommended to visit NASAs official website and follow their press releases and mission updates.

Private Companies: SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies Corp., founded by Elon Musk in 2002, is a private aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company. They have been driving interesting activity in various space exploration initiatives. This is aimed at revolutionizing space travel and making it more accessible. Some space exploration activities and projects that SpaceX has been working on include:

Another country doing some work is China. China National Space Administration (CNSA) has been actively working on space exploration with some achievements under its belt. It is noteworthy to mention that the space industry is evolving rapidly. Here are some major areas of Chinas space exploration efforts:

Furthermore, the Russian Roscosmos has a long history in space exploration, with a rich history of achievements dating back to the era of the Soviet Union. Here are some major areas of Roscosmoss space exploration efforts:

Besides, several African countries have shown an increasing interest in space exploration and have taken steps to develop their space capabilities. It is important to say that Africas involvement in space activities varies among its countries. Here are some major aspects of space exploration in Africa:

While these examples demonstrate the progress made by some African countries in space exploration, it is important to recognize that the level of involvement varies across the continent, and yes more work can be done through private organizations active involvement. Collaboration and the sharing of resources and expertise have been major conversations in promoting Africas presence in space exploration. Continued efforts and investments are likely to shape Africas role in future space activities.

In conclusion, while space exploration has led to numerous benefits and advancements, some challenges need to be addressed, including cost, environmental impact, and ethical considerations. Continued international collaboration and responsible exploration practices are crucial for ensuring the sustainable development of space activities.

Thank you for the investment in time, and I am open to conversations on furthering these thoughts. To be notified each time I publish a new post, follow my Medium: https://medium.com/@roariyo and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olufemi-ariyo-923ba6130/ or send an email to [emailprotected]

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Space exploration and colonisation: US, China, Russia and others | TheCable - TheCable

As Space Exploration Expands, So Will Space Law – Science Friday

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Almost 70 years agoin the middle of the Cold Warthe United States and the Soviet Union kicked off the race to space, and that high-stakes sprint transformed humanitys relationship with space forever. Ultimately the USSR launched the first satellite, Sputnik, and the U.S. put the first humans on the moon.

Now were in a different space race. But this time, there are a lot more contenders. There are more satellites in orbit than ever before, NASA is trying to put humans on Mars, countries are still sending landers to the moon, and billionaires are using rockets as tourist vehicles. All this activity raises some serious questions: Who is in charge of space? And who makes the rules?

Journalist Khari Johnson explored these questions in a recent feature for Wired magazine, featuring experts at the forefront of these issues. Guest host Sophie Bushwick is joined by two of them: Dr. Timiebi Aganaba, assistant professor of space and society at Arizona State University, and Dr. Danielle Wood, assistant professor and director of the Space Enabled Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They discuss the role of space lawyers, what cases they may argue, and how the rules of spaceand the potential for conflictsare evolving.

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As Space Exploration Expands, So Will Space Law - Science Friday

SpaceX, NASA ‘go’ to launch Crew-8 astronaut mission to ISS on March 1 – Space.com

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SpaceX and NASA are officially go to launch their next astronaut mission to International Space Station (ISS) this week, with its four-person crew arriving at their Florida launch site on Sunday (Feb. 25).

Called Crew-8, the upcoming SpaceX mission will launch four astronauts into orbit on the Dragon capsule Endeavour and Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. Liftoff is scheduled for March 1 at 12:04 a.m. EST (0504 GMT).

Related: 8 ways SpaceX has transformed spaceflight

"Even though we all go today, we're constantly paying attention to what the rocket and spacecraft are telling us so that we'll make sure that we launch when the crew and the spacecraft are ready to go, and we're ready to have a good flight to the station and a good return," Ken Bowersox, NASA's associate administrator for space operations and a former astronaut, told reporters in a Sunday night teleconference.

SpaceX's Crew-8 mission for NASA will launch NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barrett, Jeannette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin on a six-month expedition to the ISS. They will relieve their Crew-7 predecessors, another four-astronaut team, who will return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon a week after Crew-8 reaches the ISS.

Dominick will command the Crew-8 flight to the ISS with Barrett as pilot. Epps and Grekenkin are mission specialists. The mission is the first career spaceflight for all but Barrett on the Crew-8 team. NASA and SpaceX initially aimed to launch Crew-8 to the ISS on Feb. 22, but delayed it to March 1 to clear a path for a private moon launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from their same launch pad on Feb. 15.

The Crew-8 astronauts arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Sunday afternoon as they spend their final days on Earth ahead of launch. The quartet will perform a dress rehearsal for their launch overnight on Monday and Tuesday, with SpaceX expected to perform a so-called "hot-fire" test of the Falcon 9's first stage engines a day later.

Steve Stitch, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, told reporters Sunday that NASA and SpaceX are working through some final issues to clear ahead of the Crew-8 launch. Those include reviews of composite material fasteners on the Dragon/Falcon 9 launch vehicle for Crew-8 that are expected to be resolved before flight. Engineers are also reviewing some paint discoloration on Crew-7's Dragon capsule currently docked at the ISS, apparently due to residue tape on the capsule, to ensure it's not an issue for reentry and landing.

Crew-8 will mark the fifth flight of the Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour, which first flew astronauts to the ISS in May 2020 on SpaceX's first-ever human spaceflight, Demo-2. SpaceX and NASA are currently working to certify the reusable Dragon capsules for up to 15 spaceflights, NASA officials said.

SpaceX is one of two commercial companies with multi-billion-dollar contracts to fly astronauts to and from the ISS for NASA. The other company, Boeing, aims to launch the first crewed flight on its Starliner spacecraft no earlier than April 22.

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SpaceX, NASA 'go' to launch Crew-8 astronaut mission to ISS on March 1 - Space.com

A Nasa mission that collided with an asteroid didn’t just leave a dent it reshaped the space rock – theconversation.com

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A frequent idea in sci-fi and apocalyptic films is that of an asteroid striking Earth and causing global devastation. While the probabilities of this kind of mass extinction occurring on our planet are incredibly small, they are not zero.

The results of Nasas Dart mission to the asteroid Dimorphos have now been published. They contain fascinating details about the composition of this asteroid and whether we can defend Earth against incoming space rocks.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) was a spacecraft mission that launched in November 2021. It was sent to an asteroid called Dimorphos and commanded to collide with it, head on, in September 2022.

Dimorphos posed and poses no threat to Earth in the near future. But the mission was designed to see if deflecting an asteroid away from a collision course with Earth was possible through kinetic means in other words, a direct impact of a human-made object on its surface.

Asteroid missions are never easy. The relatively small size of these objects (compared to planets and moons) means there is no appreciable gravity to enable spacecraft to land and collect a sample.

Space agencies have launched a number of spacecraft to asteroids in recent times. For example, the Japanese space agencys (Jaxa) Hayabusa-2 mission reached the asteroid Ryugu in 2018, the same year Nasas Osiris-Rex mission rendezvoused with the asteroid Bennu.

The Japanese Hayabusa missions (1 and 2) fired a small projectile at the surface as they approached it. They would then collect the debris as it flew by.

However, the Dart mission was special in that it was not sent to deliver samples of asteroid material to labs on Earth. Instead, it was to fly at high speed into the space rock and be destroyed in the process.

A high-speed collision with an asteroid needs incredible precision. Darts target of Dimorphos was actually part of a double asteroid system, known as a binary because the smaller object orbits the larger one. This binary contained both Didymus the larger of the two objects and Dimorphos, which behaves effectively as a moon.

The simulations of what has happened to Dimorphos show that while we might expect to see a very large crater on the asteroid from Darts impact, it is more likely that it has, in fact, changed the shape of the asteroid instead.

The collision was of a mass of 580kg hitting an asteroid of roughly 5 billion kg. For comparison, this is equivalent to an ant hitting two buses. But the spacecraft is also travelling around 6 kilometres per second.

The simulation results based on observations of the asteroid Dimorphos have shown that the asteroid now orbits around its larger companion, Didymus, 33 minutes slower than before. Its orbit has gone from 11 hours, 55 minutes to 11 hours, 22 minutes.

The momentum change to the core of Dimorphos is also higher than one would predict from the direct impact, which may seem impossible at first. However, the asteroid is quite weakly constructed, consisting of loose rubble held together by gravity. The impact caused a lot of material to be blown off of Dimorphos.

This material is now travelling in the opposite direction to the impact. This acts like a recoil, slowing down the asteroid.

Observations of all the highly reflective material that has been shed from Dimorphos allows scientists to estimate how much of it has been lost from the asteroid. Their result is roughly 20 million kilograms equivalent to about six of the Apollo-era Saturn V rockets fully loaded with fuel.

Combining all the parameters together (mass, speed, angle and amount of material lost) and simulating the impact has allowed the researchers to be fairly confident about the answer. Confident not only regarding the grain size of the material coming from Dimorphos, but also that the asteroid has limited cohesion and the surface must be constantly altered, or reshaped, by minor impacts.

But what does this tell us about protecting ourselves from an asteroid impact? Significant recent impacts on Earth have included the meteor which broke up in the sky over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, and the infamous Tunguska impact over a remote part of Siberia in 1908.

While these were not the kinds of events that are able to cause mass extinctions like the 10km object that wiped out the dinosaurs when it struck our planet 66 million years ago the potential for damage and loss of life with smaller objects such as those at Chelyabinsk and Tunguska is very high.

The Dart mission cost US$324 million (255 million), which is low for a space mission, and with its development phase completed, a similar mission to go and deflect an asteroid heading our way could be launched more cheaply.

The big variable here is how much warning we will have, because a change in orbit of 30 minutes as was observed when Dart struck Dimorphos will make little difference if the asteroid is already very close to Earth. However, if we can predict the object path from further out preferably outside the Solar System and make small changes, this could be enough to divert the path of an asteroid away from our planet.

We can expect to see more of these missions in the future, not only because of interest in the science surrounding asteroids, but because the ease of removing material from them means that private companies might want to step up their ideas of mining these space rocks for precious metals.

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A Nasa mission that collided with an asteroid didn't just leave a dent it reshaped the space rock - theconversation.com

NASA, SpaceX’s Crew-8 astronauts arrive at Kennedy Space Center – Yahoo News

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NASA and SpaceX are counting down to the launch of their next crewed mission to the International Space Station.

Crew-8 arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Sunday.

The team consists of three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut.

See: SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft arrives at Kennedy Space Center ahead of Crew-8 launch

They are set to travel to the ISS on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

One veteran astronaut on the crew launched from the Kennedy Space Center 13 years ago and said he is excited to make a return trip.

Watch: SpaceX launches 2nd Starship mega rocket

So, its just an absolute pleasure to see Kennedy Space Center be the thriving spaceport that it is, said NASA astronaut Michael Barratt. Were very honored to be a part of that. I cant wait to get back to that magnificent space station. I cant wait to fly this new spaceship and I cant wait to fly with this crew.

The launch is scheduled for just after midnight on Friday.

Read: NASA looks for Martians on Earth for yearlong Mars simulation

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NASA, SpaceX's Crew-8 astronauts arrive at Kennedy Space Center - Yahoo News

NASA Seeks Volunteers for Second Mars Simulation Mission but There Are a Few Constraints – PEOPLE

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NASA is searching for a second round of volunteers to take part in a project aimed at discovering what it will be like to live on Mars.

Earlier this month, the space company announced in a release that it is seeking more participants who would be willing to live on a fake version of Mars at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for one year, ahead of human exploration of the actual planet in the future.

Marking the second of three missions calledCHAPEA a.k.a. Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog the latest will see four volunteers living in a 1,700-square-foot simulation, called theMars Dune Alpha, which is a 3D-printed habitat featuring living quarters for each volunteer, a workspace, a medical station and lounge areas, as well as a galley and food growing stations.

The man-made area, NASA said, "simulates the challenges of a mission on Mars, including resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays and other environmental stressors."

Crews will also be responsible for various tasks during their time in the habitat, the organization added, including "simulated spacewalks, robotic operations, habitat maintenance, exercise and crop growth."

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In order to participate in the simulation, which will close applications on April 2 and later take place in 2025, NASA said volunteers "should have a strong desire for unique, rewarding adventures and interest in contributing to NASAs work to prepare for the first human journey to Mars."

These volunteers, the space company continued, must be between 30 and 55 years old, non-smokers and speak English "for effective communication between crewmates and mission control."

"Crew selection will follow additional standard NASA criteria for astronaut candidate applicants," the organization added, also noting that a masters degree in engineering, math, biology or other sciences is necessary, as is professional experience or at least two years of doctoral work in the areas or a test pilot program.

Volunteers who can be compensated for the mission can also qualify if they have 1,000 hours of piloting experience, as well as if they have military experience or a bachelor's degree in a STEM field with four years of professional experience, NASA said.

Though no human has ever traveled to Mars, NASA has sentseveral devices and rovers to fly by and explore the planet over the years.

Currently, a first CHAPEA crew is taking part in a mission at the Houston-based habitat. They are more than halfway through their mission, NASA said.

In the near future, NASA plans to take part in a similar mission, called Artemis, to learn about the moon in an effort to eventually send the first woman, person of color and international partner astronaut there.

"As NASA works to establish a long-term presence for scientific discovery and exploration on the moon through the Artemis campaign, CHAPEA missions provide important scientific data to validate systems and develop solutions for future missions to the Red Planet," the organization said in a statement.

"With thefirst CHAPEA crewmore than halfway through their yearlong mission, NASA is using research gained through the simulated missions to help inform crew health and performance support during Mars expeditions," NASA continued.

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NASA Seeks Volunteers for Second Mars Simulation Mission but There Are a Few Constraints - PEOPLE

Astronauts, cosmonaut arrive at Kennedy Space Center ahead of NASA, SpaceX Crew-8 launch Spaceflight Now – Spaceflight Now

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The four members of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission pose in front of the NASA Gulfstream plane at Space Floridas Launch and Landing Facility. (Left to right) Roscosmos Cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin and NASA Astronauts Jeanette Epps, Matthew Dominick and Michael Barratt. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Set against a bright, blue Florida skyline, the three astronauts and one cosmonaut who make up the SpaceX Crew-8 mission touched down at NASAs Kennedy Space Center Sunday afternoon.

The crews Gulfstream cruised in for a landing at the Space Florida Launch and Landing Facility at about 1:45 p.m. (1845 UTC). They were greeted on the tarmac by, Jennifer Kunz, a KSC Associate Director, and Dana Hutcherson, Deputy Director Commercial Crew.

Coming out here to the Cape, every time, Im a kid in a candy store, said Matthew Dominick, a NASA astronaut and the commander of the Crew-8 mission.

While the upcoming mission will be the first spaceflight for Dominick, he worked for NASA for seven years leading up this launch.

Its an incredible time to be involved in spaceflight. Who wouldve though five or six years ago that this would be the fifth flight of Endeavour that we get to go on? Who wouldve though five or six years ago that the competition for launch or the constraint to launch would be a launch pad? Dominick said, referring to the recent launch of the IM-1 robotic mission to the Moon. We delayed our launch a few days because theres stiff competition to get out there to 39A. Its not a rocket constraint, its a pad constraint.

Hes leading a trio that include two additional NASA astronauts, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut, Alexander Grebenkin. They will launch to the orbiting outpost no earlier than Friday, March 1 at 12:04 a.m. EST (0504 UTC).

Barratt is returning to launch at KSC for the first time since his final flight as a member of STS-133 in 2011. He said its remarkable to be back now in the era of the Commercial Crew Program and be preparing to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft.

The fact that this spaceport is so busy, so vibrant is just an amazing thing, Barratt said. Its just an absolute pleasure to see Kennedy Space Center being the thriving spaceport that it is. Were very honored to be a part of that. I cannot wait to get back to that magnificent station, I cant wait to fly this new spaceship and I cant wait to to fly with this crew.

Like Dominick and Grebenkin, Epps will be making her first trip to space on this mission. Shes experienced pivots from flying on a Russian Soyuz to then Boeing Starliner and finally to her current assignment on Crew-8.

Its overwhelming to me how many people contributed to this. So, I just want to thank everyone whos been involved, Epps said. Im very grateful for this flight. Ive trained for Soyuz, Ive trained for Boeing, Ive trained for a lot of vehicles, but Im honored to fly with this crew on the Dragon Endeavour.

Endeavor will be making its 5th flight into space on this mission, marking its position as the flight leader in the SpaceX spacecraft fleet. Five missions is the most that NASA has certified a Dragon to fly to date.

A new Dragon spacecraft is expected to enter the fleet sometime in 2024.

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Astronauts, cosmonaut arrive at Kennedy Space Center ahead of NASA, SpaceX Crew-8 launch Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

Why the Odysseus Moon Landing Is So Important – TIME

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Early this week, Facebook provided me with a sweet piece of serendipity when it served up a picture of the late Gene Cernan. I had taken and posted the picture in 2014, when Cernan, the last man on the moon, was being feted at the premiere of the documentary about his life, titled, straightforwardly, The Last Man On the Moon. I had gotten to know Gene well over the course of many years of reporting on the space program, and was keenly saddened when we lost him to cancer three years later.

But this week, on Feb. 22, Cernan made news in a bank-shot sort of way, when the Odysseus spacecraft touched down near the south lunar pole, marking the first time the U.S. had soft-landed metal on the moon since Cernan feathered his lunar module Challenger down to the surface of the Taurus-Littrow Valley on Dec. 11, 1972. The networks made much of that 52-year gulf in cosmic history, but Odysseus was significant for two other, more substantive reasons: it marked the first time a spacecraft built by a private company, not by a governmental space program, had managed a lunar landing, and it was the first time any ship had visited a spot so far in the moons south, down in a region where ice is preserved in permanently shadowed craters. Those deposits could be harvested to serve as drinking water, breathable oxygen, and even rocket fuel by future lunar astronauts.

Today, for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon, said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a livestream that accompanied the landing. Today, for the first time in the history of humanity, a commercial company and an American company launched and led the voyage up there.

Nelsons enthusiasm was not misplaced. The six Apollo lunar landings might have been epochal events, but they were also abbreviated ones. The longest stay any of the crews logged on the surface was just three days by Cernan and his lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt. The shortest stay was less than 21 hours, by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 mission, the first lunar landing, in 1969. That so-called flags and footprints model was fine for the days when the U.S. lunar program was mostly about doing some basic spelunking and, not for nothing, beating the much-feared Soviet Union at planting a flag in the lunar regolith.

But the 21st-century moon program is different. Ever since NASA established its Artemis program in 2017, the space agency has made it clear that the new era of exploration will be much more ambitious. The goal is in part for American astronauts to establish at least a semi-permanent presence on the moon, with a mini-space station known as Gateway positioned in lunar orbit, allowing crews to shuttle to and from the surface. NASA also plans to create a south pole habitat that the crews could call home. And all of this will be done by a much more diverse corps of astronauts, with women and persons of color joining the all-white, all-male list of astronauts who traveled to the moon the first time around.

There is, however, a catch: money. In the glory days of Apollo, NASA funding represented 4% of the total federal budget; now its just 0.4%. That means taking the job of designing and building spacecraft off of the space agencys plate and outsourcing it to private industry, the way SpaceX now ferries crews to the International Space Station, charging NASA for the rides the way it charges satellite manufacturers and other private customers. The Commercial Crew Program, of which SpaceX is a part, was established in 2011, and has been a rousing success, so much so that, in 2018, NASA took things a step further, announcing the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, similarly outsourcing the delivery of equipment that astronaut-settlers will need.

CLPS, however, stumbled out of the gate. On Jan. 8 of this year, the Peregrine lander, built by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, was launched to a similar lunar region that Odysseus targeted, carrying 20 payloads, including mini-rovers, a spectrometer designed to scour the soil for traces of water, and another to study the moons exceedingly tenuous atmosphere. Peregrine was not destined to make it out of Earths orbit, however, after an engine failure stranded itleaving the ship to plunge back into the atmosphere 10 days after launch.

There will be some failures, Astrobotic CEO John Thornton told TIME before the Peregrine mission launched. But if even half of these missions succeed, it is still a wild, runaway success.

Odysseus landed in that second, happier column. Built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, the spacecraft carries six science instruments, including stereoscopic cameras, an autonomous navigation system, and a radio wave detector to help measure charged particles above the surfacecritical to determining the necessary sheathing in an eventual habitat. NASA has at least eight other CLPS missions planned, including two more by Intuitive Machines and another by Astrobotic, through 2026. After that, the program is expected to go on indefinitelysupplying lunar bases for as long as Artemis has astronauts on the moon.

Just when those explorers will arrive is unclear. The Artemis II mission, which was expected to take astronauts on a circumlunar journey in November of this year, has been postponed until September of 2025, due to R&D issues in both the Space Launch System moon rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Artemis III, set to be the first landing since the Apollo 17 astronauts trod the regolith, will likely not come until 2026 at the earliest.

That 52 year wait would not have sat well with that long-ago crew. In the same year in which they flew, the National Football Leagues Miami Dolphins made a less consequential history of their own, when they became the first and so far only team to go through an entire season undefeated. The surviving members of that legendary squad have waited out the seasons that have followed, pulling for their record to standand conceding relief when the final undefeated team at last records a loss. Cernan, for his part, wanted nothing to do with his own last man record. We leave here as we came and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind, he said before he climbed back up the ladder of his lunar module and left the moon behind. The success of Odysseus does not make the fulfillment of Cernans wish imminent, but it does nudge it closer.

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Why the Odysseus Moon Landing Is So Important - TIME

NASA will retire the ISS soon. Here’s what comes next. – NPR

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The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly around of the orbiting lab on Nov. 8, 2021. NASA hide caption

The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly around of the orbiting lab on Nov. 8, 2021.

Since its first modules launched at the end of 1998, the International Space Station has been orbiting 250 miles above Earth. But at the end of 2030, NASA plans to crash the ISS into the ocean after it is replaced with a new space station, a reminder that nothing within Earth's orbit can stay in space forever.

NASA is collaborating on developing a space station owned, built, and operated by a private company either Axiom Space, Voyager Space, or Blue Origin. NASA is giving each company hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and sharing their expertise with them.

Eventually, they will select one company to officially partner with and have them replace the ISS. NASA says this will help them focus on deep space exploration, which they consider a much more difficult task.

Progress photos showing the Axiom Space station being built. ENRICO SACCHETTI/Axiom Space hide caption

Progress photos showing the Axiom Space station being built.

But any company that is able to develop their own space station, get approval from the federal government and launch it into space will be able to pursue their own deep space missions even without the approval of NASA.

Phil McCalister, director of the Commercial Space Division of NASA, told NPR's Morning Edition that NASA does not want to own in perpetuity everything in low-Earth orbit which is up to 1,200 miles above Earth's surface.

"We want to turn those things over to other organizations that could potentially do it more cost-effectively, and then focus our research and activities on deep space exploration," said McCalister.

McCalister says the ISS could stay in space longer, but it's much more cost-effective for NASA to acquire a brand new station with new technology. NASA would then transition to purchasing services from commercial entities as opposed to the government building a next-generation commercial space station.

The ISS was designed in the 80s, so the technology when it was first built was very different from what is available today.

"I kind of see this as like an automobile. When we bought that automobile in 1999, it was state of the art. And it has been great. And it serves us well and continues to be safe. But it's getting older. It's getting harder to find spare parts. The maintenance for that is becoming a larger issue," McCalister said.

A new, private space station will have a lot of similarities and some differences from the current ISS.

Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station, says that despite it aging, not all the technology on the ISS is out of date.

"We've been evolving the technology on the International Space Station since it was first built. So some of these technologies will carry over to these private space stations," said Gatens. "We've upgraded the batteries, we've upgraded and added solar arrays that roll out and are flexible, we've been upgrading our life support systems."

The view from NASA spacewalker Thomas Marshburn's camera points downward toward the ISS on December 2, 2021. Thomas Marshburn/NASA hide caption

The view from NASA spacewalker Thomas Marshburn's camera points downward toward the ISS on December 2, 2021.

Paulo Lozano is the director of the Space Propulsion Laboratory at MIT and an aerospace engineer. He said, "NASA has already changed the solar panels at least once and switched them from these very large arrays that produce relatively little power, to these smaller arrays that produce much more power. All the computer power at the beginning is nothing compared to what can be done today."

Gatens says the structure of the space station which is the size of a football field is what can't be upgraded and replaced. And something of that size is costly for NASA to maintain.

"The big structure, even though it's doing very well, has a finite lifetime. It won't last forever. It is affected by the environment that it's in. And every time we dock a vehicle and undock a vehicle, the thermal environment puts stresses and loads on that primary structure that will eventually make it wear out," said Gatens.

Gatens says we can expect a new space station to be designed a little more efficiently and right sized for the amount of research that NASA and its partners are going to want to do in low-Earth orbit.

NASA astronaut Megan McArthur doing an experiment on the ISS on May 26, 2021. NASA hide caption

NASA astronaut Megan McArthur doing an experiment on the ISS on May 26, 2021.

The structure of the ship is also extremely important to the people who work there.

The ISS carries scientists who perform research that can only be done in the weak gravity of space, like medical research. In space, cells age more quickly and conditions progress more rapidly, helping researchers understand the progression of things like heart disease or cancer more quickly.

Researchers on the ISS also work to understand what happens to the human body when it's exposed to microgravity. This research is aimed at helping develop ways to counteract the negative effects of being in space and let astronauts stay there longer something essential to getting a human on Mars.

Gatens says a new space station will have updated research facilities.

"I'm looking forward to seeing very modern laboratory equipment on these space stations. We say the International Space Station has a lot of capability, but it's more like a test kitchen. I'm looking forward to seeing the future commercial space stations take these laboratory capabilities and really develop them into state-of-the-art space laboratories," said Gatens.

Expedition 60 crewmembers Luca Parmitano, Christina Koch, Andrew Morgan, and Nick Hague in the ISS cupola photographing Hurricane Dorian on August 30, 2019. NASA hide caption

Expedition 60 crewmembers Luca Parmitano, Christina Koch, Andrew Morgan, and Nick Hague in the ISS cupola photographing Hurricane Dorian on August 30, 2019.

On top of having modern research facilities, new space stations will likely be designed to provide a cleaner environment for researchers.

"If you see pictures of the station, you'll think 'how can they work there?' It looks cluttered, it looks messy," Astronaut Peggy Whitson told NPR. She's spent more time in space than any other woman and is the first woman to command the ISS. Whitson is now Director of Human Spaceflight and an astronaut at Axiom Space, one of the companies funded by NASA to develop a space station.

Whitson said the reason there are cables all over the place is because the structure of the station wasn't designed for some of the systems it has now. She thinks having a method for making a station even more adaptable to new technology will be important in terms of user experience.

Whitson doesn't know what technology will be available five years from now. But she said Axiom Space will want to take advantage of whatever they can get their hands on, ideally without wires everywhere.

Peggy Whitson in the ISS's cupola. AXIOM SPACE/Axiom Space hide caption

Peggy Whitson in the ISS's cupola.

"I would like all that cabling and networking to be behind the panels so that it's easier for folks to move around in space," Whitson said. "Having and building in that adaptability is one of the most critical parts, I think, of building a station for low-Earth orbit."

Paulo Lozano says many of the electronic components on the ISS are bulky. But now that electronics are smaller, she expects the interior of future stations might be a bit different.

At the current ISS, there is one small inflatable module. That structure flies up, collapsed, and then expands as it gets filled with air once it's attached to the primary structure of the station with it literally blowing up kind of like a balloon. Gatens says they are looking at multiple elements of a new space station being inflatable.

Whitson told NPR that on the space station Axiom Space is developing, they will have windows in the crew quarters and a huge cupola, what she describes as an astronaut's window to the world. On the ISS, they have a cupola you can pop your head and shoulders into and see 360-degree views of space and look down at the Earth.

On the proposed Axiom space station, Whitson said the cupola is so large that astronauts will be able to float their whole body in there and have it be an experience of basically almost flying in space.

NASA hopes that by handing responsibility of an ISS replacement over to private companies, it will allow the agency to develop technology more quickly and focus on their next goal of putting a station beyond low-Earth orbit for the first time. Current proposed low-Earth orbit stations include the Lunar Gateway, which is NASA's planned space station on the moon.

"What the space stations of today are doing is just paving the way for humans to actually explore deeper into space, which is going to be a significantly harder challenge to accomplish. The space stations of today are essential stepping stones towards that goal," said Lozano.

Gatens says one piece of technology that is being developed at Blue Origin is a big rotating space station that, when finished, would have artificial gravity.

For long trips in space, the lack of gravity is a main issue for the human body, causing bone-loss and other health issues. "If you could recreate that in space, that will be very beneficial," Gatens said.

Lozano says that a space station beyond low-Earth orbit would need new technology that is radically different from what's been used in the ISS. And both NASA and Lozano don't think it is possible to venture deeper into space, and eventually get a human on Mars, with U.S. government funding alone.

"I don't think we're very far away in terms of technology development. I think we're a little bit far away in terms of investment, because space technology is quite expensive and sometimes a single nation cannot really make it work by itself. So you need international cooperation." Lozano said.

Treye Green edited the digital version of this story.

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NASA will retire the ISS soon. Here's what comes next. - NPR

Cloud Native Efficient Computing is the Way in 2024 and Beyond – ServeTheHome

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Today we wanted to discuss cloud native and efficient computing. Many have different names for this, but it is going to be the second most important computing trend in 2024, behind the AI boom. Modern performance cores have gotten so big and fast that there is a new trend in the data center: using smaller and more efficient cores. Over the next few months, we are going to be doing a series on this trend.

As a quick note: We get CPUs from all of the major silicon players. Also, since we have tested these CPUs in Supermicro systems, we are going to say that they are all sponsors of this, but it is our own idea and content.

Let us get to the basics. Once AMD re-entered the server market (and desktop) with a competitive performance core in 2017, performance per core and core counts exploded almost as fast as pre-AI boom slideware on the deluge of data. As a result, cores got bigger, cache sizes expanded, and chips got larger. Each generation of chips got faster.

Soon, folks figured out a dirty secret in the server industry: faster per core performance is good if you license software by core, but there are a wide variety of applications that need cores, but not fast ones. Todays smaller efficient cores tend to be on the order of performance of a mainstream Skylake/ Cascade Lake Xeon from 2017-2021, yet they can be packed more densely into systems.

Consider this illustrative scenario that is far too common in the industry:

Here, we have several apps built by developers over the years. Each needs its own VM and each VM is generally between 2-8 cores. These are applications that need to be online 247 but are not ones that need massive amounts of compute. Good examples are websites that serve a specific line of business function but do not have hundreds of thousands of visitors. Also, these tend to be workloads that are already in cloud instances, VMs, or containers. As the industry has started to move away from hypervisors with per-core licensing or per-socket license constraints, scaling up to bigger, faster cores that are going underutilized makes little sense.

As a result, the industry realized it needed lower cost to produce chips that are chasing density instead of per-core performance. An awesome way to think about this is to think about trying to fit the maximum number of instances for those small line-of-business applications developed over the years that are sitting in 2-8 core VMs into as few servers as possible. There are other applications like this as well that are commonly shown such as nginx web servers, redis servers, and so forth. Another great example is that some online game instances require one core per user in the data center, even if that core is relatively meager. Sometimes just having more cores is, well, more cores = more better.

Once the constraints of legacy hypervisor per core/ per socket licensing are removed, then the question becomes how to fit as many cores on a package, and then how dense those packages can be deployed in a rack. One other trend we are seeing is not just more cores, but also lower clock speed cores. CPUs that have a maximum frequency in the 2-3GHz range today tend to be considerably more power efficient than those with frequencies of P-core only servers in the 4GHz+ range and desktop CPUs now pushing well over 5GHz. This is the voltage frequency curve at work. If your goal is to have more cores, but do not need maximum per-core performance, then lowering the performance per core by 25% but decreasing the power by 40% or more, means that all of those applications are being serviced with less power.

Less power is important for a number of reasons. Today, the biggest reason is the AI infrastructure build-out. If you, for example, saw our 49ers Levis Stadium tour video, that is a perfect example of a data center that is not going to expand in footprint and can only expand cooling so much. It also is a prime example of a location that needs AI servers for sports analytics.

That type of constraint where the same traditional work needs to get done, in a data center footprint that is not changing, while adding more high-power AI servers is a key reason cloud-native compute is moving beyond the cloud. Transitioning applications running on 2017-2021 era Xeon servers to modern cloud-native cores with approximately the same performance per core can mean 4-5x the density per system at ~2x the power consumption. As companies release new generations of CPUs, the density figures are increasing at a steep rate.

We showed this at play with the same era of servers and modern P-core servers in our 5th Gen Intel Xeon Processors Emerald Rapids review.

We also covered the consolidation just between P-core generations in the accompanying video. We are going to have an article with the current AMD EPYC Bergamo parts very soon in a similar vein.

If you are not familiar with the current players in the cloud-native CPU market, that you can buy for your data centers/ colocation, here is a quick run-down.

The AMD EPYC Bergamo was AMDs first foray into cloud-native compute. Onboard, it has up to 128 cores/ 256 threads and is the densest publicly available x86 server CPU currently available.

AMD removed L3 cache from its P-core design, lowered the maximum all core frequencies to decrease the overall power, and did extra work to decrease the core size. The result is the same Zen 4 core IP, with less L3 cache and less die area. Less die area means more can be packaged together onto a CPU.

Some stop with Bergamo, but AMD has another Zen 4c chip in the market. The AMD EPYC 8004 series, codenamed Siena also uses Zen 4c but with half the memory channels, less PCIe Gen5 I/O and single-socket only operation.

Some organizations that are upgrading from popular dual 16 core Xeon servers can move to single socket 64-core Siena platforms and stay within a similar power budget per U while doubling the core count per U using 1U servers.

AMD markets Siena as the edge/ embedded part, but we need to recognize this is in the vein of current gen cloud native processors.

Arm has been making a huge splash into the space. The only Arm server CPU vendor out there for those buying their own servers, is Ampere led by many of the former Intel Xeon team.

Ampere has two main chips, the Ampere Altra (up to 80 cores) and Altra Max (up to 128 cores.) These use the same socket and so most servers can support either. The Max just came out later to support up to 128 cores.

Here, the focus on cloud-native compute is even more pronounced. Instead of having beefy floating point compute capabilities, Ampere is using Arm Neoverse N1 cores that focus on low power integer performance. It turns out, a huge number of workloads like serving web pages are mostly integer performance driven. While these may not be the cores if you wanted to build a Linpack Top500 supercomputer, they are great for web servers. Since the cloud-native compute idea was to build cores and servers that can run workloads with little to no compromise, but at lower power, that is what Arm and Ampere built.

Next up will be the AmpereOne. This is already shipping, but we have yet to get one in the lab.

AmpereOne uses a custom designed core for up to 192 cores per socket.

Assuming you could buy a server with AmpereOne, you would get more core density than an AMD EPYC Bergamo server (192 vs 128 cores) but you would get fewer threads (192 vs 256 threads.) If you had 1 vCPU VMs, AmpereOne would be denser. If you had 2 vCPU VMs, Bergamo would be denser. SMT has been a challenge in the cloud due to some of the security surfaces it exposes.

Next in the market will be the Intel Sierra Forest. Intels new cloud-native processor will offer up to 144/ 288 cores. Perhaps most importantly, it is aiming for a low power per core metric while also maintaining x86 compatibility.

Intel is taking its efficient E-core line and bringing it to the Xeon market. We have seen massive gains in E-core performance in both embedded as well as lower-power lines like the Alder Lake-N where we saw greater than 2x generational performance per chip. Now, Intel is splitting its line into P-cores for compute intensive workloads and E-cores for high-density scale-out compute.

Intel will offer Granite Rapids as an update to the current 5th Gen Xeon Emerald Rapids for all P-core designs later in 2024. Sierra Forest will be the first generation all E-core design and is planned for the first half of 2024. Intel already has announced the next generation Clearwater Forest will continue the all E-core line. As a full disclosure, this is a launch I have been excited about for years.

We are going to quickly mention the NVIDIA Grace Superchip here. With up to 144 cores across two dies packaged along with LPDDR memory.

While at 500W and usingArm Neoverse V2 performance cores, one would not think of this as a cloud native processor, it does have something really different. The Grace Superchip has onboard memory packaged alongside its Arm CPUs. As a result, that 500W is actually for CPU and memory. There are applications that are primarily memory bandwidth bound, not necessarily core count bound. For those applications, something like a Grace Superchip can actually end up being a lower-power solution than some of the other cloud-native offerings. These are also not the easiest to get, and are priced at a significant premium. One could easily argue these are not cloud-native, but if our definition is doing the same work in a smaller more efficient footprint, then the Grace Superchip might actually fall into that category for a subset of workloads.

If you were excited for our 2nd to 5th Gen Intel Xeon server consolidation piece, get ready. To say that the piece we did in late 2023 was just the beginning would be an understatement.

While many are focused on AI build-outs, projects to shrink portions of existing compute footprints by 75% or more are certainly possible, making more space, power, and cooling available for new AI servers. Also, just from a carbon footprint perspective, using newer and significantly more power-efficient architectures to do baseline application hosting makes a lot of sense.

The big question in the industry right now on CPU compute is whether cloud native energy-efficient computing is going to be 25% of the server CPU market in 3-5 years, or if it is going to be 75%. My sense is that it likely could be 75%, or perhaps should be 75%, but organizations are slow to move. So at STH, we are going to be doing a series to help overcome that organizational inertia and get compute on the right-sized platforms.

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Spacegoods secures 2.5m to supercharge functional mushrooms and nootropics blends – The Grocer

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Wellness startup Spacegoods has closed a 2.5m seed round to accelerate growth of its functional mushrooms and nootropics range.

Matthew Kelly launched the London-based brand in 2022 and has since attracted more than 75,000 customers.

The business makes all-in-one powder blends aimed at enhancing energy, relaxation, mood and general wellbeing, which are marketed as being similar to coffee but without crashes or jitters.

It will use the funding to expand its product portfolio and broaden its customer base, with the seed round led by food tech fund Five Seasons Ventures, alongside backing from Redrice Ventures, Slingshot Ventures and G Fund.

In addition to product development and research, the cash will support team expansion in London, with Spacegoods hiring across growth, marketing and product teams.

The functional mushroom space is relatively untapped in Europe, said Kelly. With this investment, and the support of our investors, Spacegoods has a huge opportunity to be the European market leader.

Produced in the UK, Spacegoods blends are claimed to be 100% natural and made with a combination of adaptogen mushrooms and nootropics, such as ashwagandha and lions mane.

Both its flagship Rainbow Dust day blend which claims to enhance focus and energy and the Astro Dust night blend which promotes relaxation and restful sleep come in a range of flavours.

The business, which also has a presence in Europe, said it had gained significant momentum since launching, with an impressive growth rate primarily through DTC sales online.

Five Seasons Ventures principal Saskia Hoebe added: Spacegoods is a first mover in a novel category of mushroom-based energy and supplements, and has the vision to become a category leader in the space.

The company operates at the crossroads of three trendy markets: supplements, functional drinks and coffee replacements, all in which high growth is expected in the coming years due to increased consumer demand for clean energy and broader wellness.

The adaptogenic mushroom market was valued at approximately $10.9bn in 2022 and is expected to grow 10% annually, reaching a projected value of $30bn by 2032, according to Global Market Insights data.

Spacegoods previously raised 500k in a pre-seed round from angel investors.

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Spacegoods secures 2.5m to supercharge functional mushrooms and nootropics blends - The Grocer

News from the Press Site: A roundup of the week’s space news Spaceflight Now – Spaceflight Now

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Join us for a roundup of the weeks space news with reporters covering the big stories. Spaceflight Nows Will Robinson-Smith is joined by Chris Davenport of The Washington Post and Gina Sunseri of ABC News. The show goes live at 4 p.m. EST (2100 UTC).

The discussion will include stories like the launch and process of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander, which is making its way towards the Moon; the warnings on Capitol Hill about Russias potential development of an anti-satellite weapon and SpaceX achieving the 300th launch of its Falcon 9 rocket with its latest Starlink mission.

Chris Davenport, The Washington Post: Possible Russian aggression in space Launch of commercial lunar lander

Gina Sunseri Intuitive Machines Moon-bound lander launches Warning of national security threat from Russian space activity

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News from the Press Site: A roundup of the week's space news Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

H3 reaches orbit on second launch – SpaceNews

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Updated Feb. 17 with additional details from JAXA.

WASHINGTON Japans H3 rocket successfully reached orbit on its second launch Feb. 16, nearly a year after its inaugural launch failed.

The H3 rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 7:22 p.m. Eastern after a two-day delay caused by weather. There were no issues reported during the countdown, with liftoff occurring at the beginning of a window lasting more than two and a half hours.

A key point in the launch was the separation of the upper stage and ignition of its LE-5B-3 engine. On the vehicles inaugural launch in March 2023, that engine failed to ignite, forcing controllers to issue a destruct command to destroy the stage and its payload, the ALOS-3 Earth observation satellite.

On this launch, designated H3 Test Flight 2 (H3TF2) by the Japanese space agency JAXA, the engine did ignite. The stage reached a preliminary orbit of about 674 kilometers 16 and a half minutes after liftoff, and moments later deployed one of its payloads, the CE-SAT-1E imaging satellite built by Canon Electronics.

It was scheduled to be followed about nine minutes later by the other secondary payload, a cubesat called TIRSAT. JAXA said in a later statement that the separation signal for tIRSAT was sent, but did not explicitly state that the cubesat had deployed.

A second burn of the upper stage took place one hour and 47 minutes after liftoff, lasting 26 seconds. After that, the upper stage deployed its primary payload, a mass simulator called Vehicle Evaluation Payload (VEP) 4. VEP-4 is a metallic column with the same mass and center of gravity as ALOS-3. JAXA flew the inert payload after criticism about flying ALOS-3, a $200 million satellite, on the rockets first launch.

That second burn was designed to demonstrate the ability to perform a controlled reentry of both the upper stage and VEP-4, said Yasuo Ishii, JAXA vice president, during a session of the Space Debris Conference organized by the Saudi Space Agency Feb. 11.

JAXA and the vehicles prime contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, spent months investigating the inaugural launch failure. Engineers concluded that while the rocket received the signal to ignite the engine, an electrical failure prevented the ignition system from starting up.

While the investigation did not identify a single root cause, it did find three scenarios that most likely explained what happened: a short-circuit in wiring in the ignition system, a failed transistor in the ignition system and a failure in one computer in the stages control system that sent electrical current to a redundant computer that caused it to fail. JAXA made changes to prevent any of those scenarios from reoccurring.

The potential problems with the ignition system also affected the older H-2A rocket, which uses a version of the same upper-stage engine. That grounded the H-2A for half a year, with the rocket returning to flight in September.

The H3 is key to Japans future space plans. The rocket will succeed the H-2A and launch civil and military missions, including the new HTV-X spacecraft that will transport cargo to the International Space Station. The H3 is also designed to operate at far lower costs than the H-2A, making the vehicle more competitive in the commercial launch market.

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SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites on 3rd leg of spaceflight tripleheader (video) – Space.com

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SpaceX launched 22 more of its Starlink internet satellites on Thursday (Feb. 15), the third mission in less than 24 hours for the company.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday at 4:34 p.m. EST (1:34 p.m. local California time, or 2134 GMT).

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff as planned. It made a vertical landing on the SpaceX droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky

It was the second launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Its previous flight was also a Starlink mission.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued powering its way skyward, eventually deploying the satellites into low Earth orbit.

The Starlink launch was the final leg of a spaceflight tripleheader for SpaceX. On Wednesday evening (Feb. 14), the company launched the classified USSF-124 mission for the U.S. Space Force.

Then, at 1:05 a.m. EST (0605 GMT) on Thursday, SpaceX launched the private IM-1 moon-landing mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

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SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites on 3rd leg of spaceflight tripleheader (video) - Space.com

SpaceX stacks giant Starship rocket ahead of 3rd test flight (video, photos) – Space.com

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SpaceX's third Starship megarocket is standing tall ahead of its upcoming test flight.

SpaceX recently stacked the enormous vehicle on the orbital launch mount at its Starbase site in South Texas, placing the Ship 28 upper-stage prototype atop its Booster 10 first-stage partner.

"Starship team is preparing for a full launch rehearsal ahead of Flight 3," SpaceX wrote in a post on X today (Feb. 13) that shared photos of the milestone. In another post, the company published a short video of the stacking, which was performed by the "chopstick" arms of Starbase's launch tower.

Related:See stunning photos and video of Starship's 2nd launch

Flight 3 will likely occur about three weeks from now, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, provided the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration awards a launch license in time.

The first two test flights of Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, occurred in April and November of last year.

Both missions ended in the explosive death of Starship, though the vehicle notched some important milestones on Flight 2.

For example, the 33 Raptor engines of Starship's first stage aced their initial burn on the November missions, and the booster separated seamlessly from the upper-stage spacecraft.

Both of Starship's stainless-steel stages are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX is developing the 400-foot-tall (122 meters) megarocket to take people and payloads to the moon and Mars, as well as conduct other operations closer to home including, potentially, carrying people on superfast trips here Earth.

SpaceX has already signed NASA up as a customer: The space agency picked Starship to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration. If all goes according to plan, Starship will put NASA astronauts down near the lunar south pole for the first time in September 2026, on the Artemis 3 mission.

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SpaceX stacks giant Starship rocket ahead of 3rd test flight (video, photos) - Space.com

Russia launches a Valentine’s Day Progress supply ship to the ISS – Space.com

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A fresh load of supplies is headed for the International Space Station.

Russia launched its robotic Progress 87 cargo ship on a Valentine's Day delivery mission toward the International Space Station tonight (Feb. 14).

The freighter lifted off atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:25 p.m. EST (0325 GMT and 8:25 a.m. on Feb. 15 local time in Baikonur).

Related: Facts about Roscosmos, Russia's space agency

Progress 87 is carrying about 3 tons of food, propellant and other supplies.

If all goes according to plan, the freighter will reach the orbiting lab early Saturday (Feb. 17), docking with the Russian Zvezda service module at 1:12 a.m. EST (0612 GMT). You can watch that rendezvous live here at Space.com, via NASA; coverage will begin at 12:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT) on Saturday.

Progress is one of three robotic spacecraft that currently fly resupply missions to the ISS, along with Northrop Grumman's Cygnus vehicle and SpaceX's Cargo Dragon capsule.

Progress and Cygnus are expendable spacecraft, burning up in Earth's atmosphere when their time in orbit is done. But Dragon is designed to be reusable; it splashes down safely in the ocean under parachutes, which means it can bring science samples back down to Earth.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:45 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 with news of a successful liftoff.

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Russia launches a Valentine's Day Progress supply ship to the ISS - Space.com

This astronaut took 5 spacewalks. Now, he’s helping make spacesuits for future ISS crews (exclusive) – Space.com

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The next generation of spacesuits for astronauts just went parabolic.

Collins Aerospace tested its new spacesuit design, built for International Space Station spacewalks, on a parabolic flight that simulated microgravity conditions. The goal was to fulfill requirements for a NASA contract aimed at replacing the long-standing extravehicular mobility units (EMUs) now used on the orbiting complex.

Following the news release on Feb. 1, Collinschief test astronaut John "Danny" Olivas a retired NASA astronaut spoke with Space.com about the company's plans for the floating suit. He also discussed exciting possibilities for moon exploration. Read on to learn more about how Olivas is using his past spacewalking experience to pave the way for future spacewalkers.

Collins received a 2022 task order from NASA to develop a next-generation EMU to be lighter and more flexible than current spacesuits. These suits are also under consideration to become moonwalking outfits for the agency's Artemis program; the design team received a separate task order in July 2023 to modify the floating-style spacesuits for surface excursions.

Related: Watch next-generation lightweight spacesuit tested on Zero-G flight (photos, video)

Space.com: What sorts of experiences were you able to port from your time at NASA to Collins, to help with the development?

Danny Olivas: I've been an engineer for over 35 years. I've always been fascinated about space. It is very much like coming home and being part of an engineering family where we toil away to produce things that are safe, efficient and effective for our clients.

The intent is basically, "right design" this suit. It should be a suit that is intuitive to the astronauts. So I feel like what I'm bringing to the table is essentially helping the engineers understand what is important, where do things need to be placed, what are the things that you need to be considering. For example, in December of last year, we completed an exercise called the "concept of operations." That essentially is evaluating the suit in an environment like you're integrated onto a spacewalk and then coming back from doing a spacewalk.

I was able to bring to the table: when we do our prep and post, here's what we do. Here's what we did on orbit. Here's how we work to this particular issue. Through that exercise, it provided feedback directly to the engineers on how to move forward. It's not a one and done thing. It's a collaboration: we've gone, and taken a look at that, and we can do this or we can't do that.

Related: Shuttle astronaut Danny Olivas talks diversity on Earth (and space) in 'Virtual Astronaut' webcast

I feel like I'm bringing everything I can to this. This likely going to be my last job, and I'm going to be on the field. I care about the astronauts: that we're building the spacesuits for the people who got me five spacewalks, and did so in a safe manner. I owe it to them, to give back to the engineering community: everything I can to help our team be successful and provide the safest and most efficient, most effective spacesuit for the next generation of explorers. That's the very least I owe for being given the opportunity.

Space.com: Can you step us through the development?

Olivas: Collins, with our partners ILC Dover Astrospace and Oceaneering, use heritage or legacy from the original Hamilton Standard suit technology, which is something that's been ingrained in the company DNA from the Apollo missions. The A7L spacesuit was the first one that was formed, all the way through the current EMU. It makes perfect sense that we are looking at extending to the next generation spacesuit for the International Space Station.

The intent is for NASA delivery and, at that point, we'll have a new suit on the space station that will not only be for the space station, but also will be applicable for other commercial destinations after ISS. That includes lunar landings as well; as you're familiar with, Axiom Space won the contract for the lunar suit and they're destined for their launch on (first moon landing) Artemis 3. We wish them the very best of luck. But we're also making a suit that's compatible with lunar applications. We look to be a continued competitor in the lunar space as well, because that is the future of exploration.

Space.com: What happened during the parabolic campaign?

Olivas: This campaign actually began over a year ago, when it was first decided that we would conduct a portion of the crew capability assessment in a microgravity environment. There's no 1 G equivalent that would give you confidence that the things that you would be doing could be applicable in microgravity. We looked at some of the more challenging things, such as airlock egress and ingress. Collins has built a mockup that was to scale.

Getting this this new suit across the hatch was vital to demonstrate that you have the ability to be able to do so, and the geometry of the suit would in fact actually go through there. So that was a big risk, especially if you consider that you only have a parabola to be able to demonstrate that. Sometimes getting in and out of the airlock can take upwards of a couple of minutes, but you don't get that liberty if you're doing a zero-G flight.

Related: I flew weightlessly on a parabolic flight to see incredible student science soar

The answer to that is practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. We were literally, on a weekly basis, writing the choreography of what we would do on each and every parabola. Every team member was there. We knew where we were going to be positioned. The whole idea was that you want to be out of the way when it's time to go to the task, when there's limited time to be able to do that. And it worked flawlessly.

I learned some things. Trying to stand on your feet on a footplate makes it a bit challenging, so for me, it was trying to learn how to operate in this I would call it a bronco, if you will. Certainly there were oscillations. But we were still able to demonstrate that you could get inside a portable foot restraint within 20 seconds.

Space.com: Can you give a comparison about what it's like to be working in the current EMU compared with what Collins is going to be able to offer?

Olivas: From the outside, probably not a lot. You're going to see two arms, two legs, a helmet and a layer of white. The secret sauce is below that layer of white. There's no technology that's carried over from the EMU, but what has been carried over is all the lessons learned against this concept in doing this from day one. We bring all that experience and heritage with the suit into the development designers.

Now let's talk about the difference between the EMU and the next generation suit. It is like night and day. I'm talking strictly right now from the PGS the pressure garment system, the mobility aspect of it. Things that would lock you up in the suit on orbit. By the way, lockup issues especially with shoulder joints are part of the reason why we had an injury rate.

As we think of accessibility to the lunar application, we have intentionally gotten rid of a component called the waist bearing assembly, the ability to essentially pivot around the waist. In exchange we have introduced hip joints, joints which work in unison to allow for walking. This gives us a lot more flexibility in the lower extremities. I think the increasing range of motion, increased maneuverability are probably the biggest attributes that I've seen.

Space.com: Anything else would you like to add?

Olivas: I would say, help me carry forward the message about what the suit is. As much as this machine is to keep the human being alive in the space like solo spacecraft it's the contributions that make it right. It's all those engineers who go through kind of an anonymous perspective in their entire career, and you're never really knowing what they do. But it just happens because of a human being behind it. That team, I'm part of today, and I want to make sure that that becomes clear.

This interview was edited and condensed. This article was amended at 2:15 p.m. EST Feb. 14 to add information about other companies involved with the Collins spacesuit and to address a typo.

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How will Artemis 2 astronauts exercise on the way to the moon? – Space.com

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MONTREAL, CANADA From simulators to space snacks, Artemis 2 astronauts are trying to practice all facets of moon living before they head toward the lunar surface in 2025.

Artemis 2 astronaut Jeremy Hansen emphasized here at Canadian Space Agency (CSA) headquarters that every detail matters when getting ready for the big mission, as it is the first moon excursion since 1972 that will have humans on board.

The constant practice, he told reporters in a gaggle, helps "keep our skills sharp, to challenge ourselves ... we're constantly in an operational environment where you're making decisions."

CSA's Hansen and his three NASA astronaut crewmates are practically livingin mockups of their Orion spacecraft to learn how to safely maneuver themselves in tight quarters. And among their tasks to tackle is something mundane, yet essential: learning how to stay fit in a tiny space while floating all the time.

Related: Astronauts won't walk on the moon until 2026 after NASA delays next 2 Artemis missions

While Orion has 60% more room than the Apollo moon capsules of the 1960s and 1970s, it has to carry four astronauts instead of three. Certainly, computers are wearable these days instead of the "single-room" machines of two generations ago and, NASA knows how to pack efficiently.

Nevertheless, getting anything on board will be a challenge.

"We're very mass-constrained and space-constrained, and that does determine how much room we have to bring things," Hansen said, noting his limited personal items will include a single pendant for his wife and three children. Orion only has 316 cubic feet (8.9 cubic meters) of space in it, which is something akin to a tiny bedroom you'd find in urban areas like New York City or Singapore. Add in computers and equipment, and that small space shrinks swiftly.

By these standards, the six-bedroom-house-sized International Space Station seems incredibly roomy. To that end, Orion has no space for any of the large exercise machines the ISS currently holds: a treadmill with straps to hold running astronauts down, a piston-driven weight machine to counteract "weightlessness," and an exercise bicycle. Taken together, the exercise equipment alone would require nearly triple the space of an Orion spacecraft, so new thinking is needed.

Enter a portable solution: The flywheel.

Versions of the flywheel have been floating around since at least 2016, when the device for astronauts was called ROCKY after the fictional boxer portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in numerous films. (That's Resistive Overload Combined with Kinetic Yo-Yo, if you're looking for some band name inspiration.)

Today's flywheel version is nested below the side hatch on Orion meant for entering and exiting.

In true small space thinking, the device acts as a step when the astronauts come inside during launch day. The crew will spend 30 minutes daily doing squats and deadlifts using cables on the device that act like a yo-yo; simple adjustments also allow the flywheel to act as a rowing machine.

The flywheel is tiny, smaller than a carry-on suitcase airlines typically allow in the passenger cabin. It also has a mass of only about three sacks of potatoes: 30 pounds, or 14 kilograms. But with small size comes a big limitation: the elastic strength maxes out at only 400 pounds (181 kilograms), which is interesting considering similar cables did not work so well for ISS missions.

NASA used to have a weight-lifting machine on the ISS called the Interim Resistive Exercise Device that also used cables that maxed out around 300 pounds (136 kg). Worse, reports from places like Wired indicate exercises like squats were only half as effective in microgravity. The newer Advanced Resistive Exercise Device does away with strength exercises "maxing out" by instead using pistons, helping astronauts stay fitter for 180 days or more in orbit. ARED is a key factor in allowing astronauts to return home with more bone mass than before, peer-reviewed research shows.

Fortunately, however, Orion is rated for shorter missions. The Artemis 2 astronauts should only use the capsule for 10 days, and time in space will go up only to a month on future missions. The fear of "deconditioning" in a floating environment is therefore less in this case, although medical professionals may eventually consider other solutions.

"As the missions get longer, that's one of the things we need to look at: what is the minimum amount of exercise that you need to perform to maintain a certain level of fitness?" said Natalie Hirsch, CSA's project manager of operational space medicine, during a media gaggle and demonstration of flywheel.

Hirsch noted astronaut health is not the only thing to think about. As any lab manager knows, vibrations can induce unexpected effects in experiments or in equipment. Orion engineers have never tested exercise equipment in space, given that Artemis 1 flew uncrewed around the moon in 2022 and the spacecraft just had a brief Earth-orbiting mission without astronauts in 2014.

Astronaut exercise data on Artemis 2, Hirsch said, will help fortify the spacecraft design against risky vibrations ahead of more ambitious moon-landing missions later in the decade.

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How NASA’s moon landing with Intuitive Machines will help pave the way for Artemis astronaut missions – Space.com

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NASA hopes a robotic moon landing this month will help prep the lunar ground for astronauts a few years from now.

Intuitive Machines' Nova-Cmoonlander, named Odysseus after the mythical Trojan War voyager, is scheduled to launch early Wednesday morning (Feb. 14) on a SpaceXFalcon 9rocket.

The Valentine's Day launch will happen from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in coastal Florida. If all goes according to plan, Odysseus will touch down near the moon's south pole on Feb. 22, pulling off the first-ever private lunar landing.

Odysseus' mission, known as IM-1, includes 12 payloads, half commercial and half NASA science packages. NASA is using this research to get ready for the Artemis program missions that will land astronauts near the moon's south pole, beginning in 2026 or so.

Related: Intuitive Machines moon lander to carry tiny NASA cameras to study lunar surface (video)

IM-1 is part of the series of low-cost private moon missions that include NASA-funded instruments, which are manifested via the agency's Commercial Lunar Payloads Services (CLPS) program.

Each of these private robotic missions is small in cost individually, with the tradeoff being fewer backup systems in case of trouble. That tradeoff was illustrated vividly by the first CLPS mission, which launched Astrobotic's Peregrine lander last month. Peregrine suffered an anomaly shortly after deploying from its United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket, scuttling its moon dreams. Peregrine ended up coming back home for a controlled destruction in Earth's atmosphere.

Smaller and cheaper missions allow NASA to test technologies faster than traditional mission planning allows for, emphasized Susan Lederer, CLPS project scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, during a teleconference today (Feb. 12). The high risk is worth it, as "this will allow us to prepare for Artemis more efficiently," with more missions launching more frequently, Lederer said.

Another advantage is the proliferation of landing options if multiple CLPS missions succeed: There's "a far greater number of places you can go to on the moon and the diversity of people involved" if lots of CLPS missions reach the surface, Lederer said.

IM-1 will help NASA engineers learn about how to communicate from the moon's south pole, where staying in touch with Earth is a challenge due to our planet being at a "very, very low point on the horizon," Lederer said.

"The communications can kind of bounce along the terrain, coming and going," she added. "So, having a location that's close to the south pole will help us to start investigating those kinds of things that are happening."

Additionally, IM-1's equipment will be assessed for how well it performs in the harsh cold of the moon, including components such as solar panels and instruments. But even if that mission or some other CLPS landers don't make it, she emphasized, NASA will proceed with plans for its Artemis 3 mission, which aims to land astronauts near the lunar south pole in September 2026.

"It won't endanger efficiency," Lederer said.

The experiments on board IM-1 from NASA include "instruments focusing on plume-surface (dust) interactions, space weather/lunar surface interactions, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies, and a communication and navigation node for future autonomous navigation technologies," the agency's website states.

Editor's note: This story was corrected at 5:15 p.m. ET on Feb. 12 to state that IM-1 will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, not Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

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How NASA's moon landing with Intuitive Machines will help pave the way for Artemis astronaut missions - Space.com

SpaceX launches private Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS (video) – Space.com

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SpaceX launched Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus spacecraft today (Jan. 30), sending the freighter and its 4 tons of cargo toward the International Space Station.

The Cygnus lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today at 12:07 p.m. EST (1707 GMT).

The launch kicked off the 20th operational cargo mission for Cygnus. SpaceX was not involved in the previous 19; they all lifted off atop Antares or Atlas V rockets.

Related: Facts about Cygnus, Northrop Grumman's cargo ship

The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth as planned today, acing its touchdown at Cape Canaveral about 8 minutes and 20 seconds after launch. It was the 10th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The Cygnus, meanwhile, deployed from the Falcon 9's upper stage in low Earth orbit around 14 minutes and 45 seconds after launch. The freighter then began making its own way to the International Space Station (ISS).

If all goes according to plan, Cygnus will arrive at the orbiting lab at 4:20 a.m. EST (0920 GMT) on Thursday (Feb. 1). You can watch its rendezvous and docking activities live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

Northrop Grumman named this Cygnus vehicle after Patty Hilliard Robertson, a NASA astronaut who died in a private plane crash in 2001. She was selected to the astronaut corps in 1998 and was supposed to fly to the ISS in 2002.

The freighter is packed with more than 8,200 pounds (3,720 kilograms) of supplies and scientific hardware. Among the research gear is a cartilage-growing experiment that could help address joint damage and disease here on Earth and a European Space Agency project that will test the 3D printing of metals in microgravity.

You can learn more about this cargo mission, called NG-20,via NASA's overview.

Cygnus will spend about six months docked to the ISS, then head back down for a fiery destruction in Earth's atmosphere.

One experiment aboard Cygnus, called the Kentucky Re-entry Probe Experiment-2, will gather data during this death dive, taking "measurements to demonstrate a thermal protection system for spacecraft and their contents during re-entry in Earth's atmosphere, which can be difficult to replicate in ground simulations," NASA officials wrote in their NG-20 mission overview.

Cygnus is one of three robotic cargo craft that currently service the ISS, along with SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Russia's Progress vehicle. Progress, like Cygnus, is an expendable spacecraft, but Dragon is reusable, surviving the trip through Earth's atmosphere and splashing down softly under parachutes in the ocean.

Editor's note: This story was corrected at 4:40 p.m. EST on Jan. 30 to state that Patty Hilliard Robertson was supposed to fly to the ISS in 2002 (rather than 2022, as originally written).

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