Daily Archives: March 17, 2017

Carrie Healey, AOL.com

Mar 14th 2017 1:36PM

Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, issued an open letter to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, stating his recommendations for the government's investments in NASA.

The scientist offered the president five recommendations for the U.S. space program in a letter and video, urging Trump to use the bipartisan support for NASA to advance space exploration.

NASA's best photos of 2016

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NASA's best photos of 2016

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Sunset From the International Space Station

Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Jeff Williams of NASA captured a series of photos for this composite image of the setting sun reflected by the ocean.

Photo Credit: NASA

Space Station Flight Over the Southern Tip of Italy

The southern tip of Italy is visible in this image taken by the Expedition 49 crew aboard the International Space Station on Sept. 17, 2016. The brightly lit city of Naples can be seen in the bottom section of the image. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft can be seen in the foreground.

Photo Credit: NASA

Star Trails Seen From Low Earth Orbit

Astronauts on the International Space Station captured a series of incredible star trail images on Oct. 3, 2016, as they orbited at 17,500 miles per hour. The station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, and astronauts aboard see an average of 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.

Photo Credit: NASA

Many Fantastic Colors

The Nili Fossae region, located on the northwest rim of Isidis impact basin, is one of the most colorful regions of Mars. This region is ancient and has had a complicated geologic history, leading to interesting structures like layered bedrock, as well as other compositions.

Photo Credit: NASA

Wind Carved Rock on Mars

The distinctively fluted surface and elongated hills in this image in Medusae Fossae are caused by wind erosion of a soft fine-grained rock. Called yardangs, these features are aligned with the prevailing wind direction. This wind direction would have dominated for a very long time to carve these large-scale features into the exposed rock.

Photo Credit: NASA

Rains of Terror on Exoplanet HD 189733b

This Halloween, take a tour with NASA's Exoplanet Exploration site of some of the most terrifying destinations in our galaxy. The nightmare world of HD 189733 b is the killer you never see coming. To the human eye, this far-off planet looks bright blue. But any space traveler confusing it with the friendly skies of Earth would be badly mistaken.

Photo Credit: NASA

Aurora and Manicouagan Crater

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station adjusted the camera for night imaging and captured the green veils and curtains of an aurora that spanned thousands of kilometers over Quebec, Canada.

Photo Credit: NASA

Paris at Night

Around local midnight time on April 8, 2015, astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of Paris, often referred to as the City of Light. The pattern of the street grid dominates at night, providing a completely different set of visual features from those visible during the day.

Photo Credit: NASA

Stargazing From the International Space Station

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) see the world at night on every orbit thats 16 times each crew day. An astronaut took this broad, short-lens photograph of Earths night lights while looking out over the remote reaches of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Photo Credit: NASA

Election Day 2016

Thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislators that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts, they have the ability to vote from space through specially designed absentee ballots. To preserve the integrity of the secret vote, the ballot is encrypted and only accessible by the astronaut and the county clerk responsible for casting it.

Photo Credit: NASA

Fiery South Atlantic Sunset

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a sunset that looks like a vast sheet of flame. With Earths surface already in darkness, the setting sun, the cloud masses, and the sideways viewing angle make a powerful image of the kind that astronauts use to commemorate their flights.

Photo Credit: NASA

Ring Details on Display

This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft showcases some of the amazingly detailed structure of Saturn's rings.

Photo Credit: NASA

Hubble Takes Flight with the Toucan and the Cluster

NGC 299 is an open star cluster located within the Small Magellanic Cloud just under 200,000 light-years away.

Photo Credit: NASA

Hubble Spies Spiral Galaxy

Spiral galaxy NGC 3274 is a relatively faint galaxy located over 20 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion).

Photo Credit: NASA

Practicing Orion Spacecraft Recovery After Splashdown

A group of U.S. Navy divers, Air Force pararescuemen and Coast Guard rescue swimmers practice Orion underway recovery techniques in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASAs Johnson Space Center to prepare for the first test flight of an uncrewed Orion spacecraft with the agencys Space Launch System rocket during Exploration Mission (EM-1).

Photo Credit: NASA

A Trio of Plumes in the South Sandwich Islands

On September 29, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Aqua satellite captured this false-color image (MODIS bands 7-2-1) showing volcanic activity in the South Sandwich Islands. Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, the uninhabited South Sandwich Islands include several active stratovolcanoes.

Photo Credit: NASA

Infrared Echoes of a Black Hole Eating a Star

This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star, disrupted as it was being devoured by a supermassive black hole. The feeding black hole is surrounded by a ring of dust. This dust was previously illuminated by flares of high-energy radiation from the feeding black hole, and is now shown re-radiating some of that energy.

Photo Credit: NASA

Hubble Views a Colorful Demise of a Sun-like Star

This star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core.

Credit: NASA

Infrared Saturn Clouds

This false-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows clouds in Saturn's northern hemisphere. The view was made using images taken by Cassini's wide-angle camera on July 20, 2016, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to infrared light at 750, 727 and 619 nanometers.

Photo credit: NASA

Moonset Viewed From the International Space Station

Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Tim Peake of ESA took this striking photograph of the moon from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station on March 28, 2016. Peake shared the image on March 30 and wrote to his social media followers, "I was looking for #Antarctica hard to spot from our orbit. Settled for a moonset instead."

Photo credit: NASA

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"You have the opportunity to provide clear direction to our nation's space program," Nye said. "The advances and discoveries made on your watch could be historic."

Nye emphasized that the country should maintain its focus on Mars, saying that the U.S. could have humans on the red planet in 15 years.

"We strongly recommend," Nye said. "Let's maintain all of the existing programs: Robotic missions, crew capsules and rocket programs."

SEE ALSO: Something terrifying is happening at the North Pole

Nye urged the president to embrace NASA and all the different jobs the agency provides and said his organization feels the government should increase spending on NASA by five percent each year for the next five years.

Nye's non-governmental space advocacy group previously provided Trump's transition team with a 16-page document on the future of the country's space programs. It is still unclear where the president stands on space exploration and NASA.

The Trump administration has expressed interest in a "rapid" return to the moon and a return to manned missions.

Watch the full video below:

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Bill Nye issues open letter to President Trump about the future of space travel - AOL

Richard "Lord British" Garriott is an Austin icon: Creator of the classic video game "Ultima" and pioneer of the commercial space flight industry.

Garriott wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps, Astronaut Dr. Owen Garriott. But when he was still just a kid, a NASA doctor told him because he needed glasses he wouldn't be eligible.

"You know after going through the 7 stages of grief, I kind of put my mind to it and said 'Hey if I can't go through the rules of NASA I'm going to have to make my own space program," Garriott said.

And that's what he did. Garriott has been to all 7 continents and even down to the Titanic shipwreck. But getting to space was the goal. He started a company called Space Adventures that began to book seats into orbit. In 2008 it was his turn.

2 weeks on the International Space Station. The price tag: $30 million.

"It only takes 8 1/2 minutes to go from sitting still on the ground to burning all the fuel in the vehicle and engines cut off and you're in orbit in space. That's obviously a pinnacle life experience as you might expect," Garriott said. "You see a place you knew well like for me: Austin, Texas. You go like 'Wow there's Lake Travis, there's downtown, there's my house.'"

Elon Musk's company SpaceX recently announced that 2 tourists will be hitching a ride with them and orbiting the moon in late 2018. The company won't say how much the private astronauts are spending but Garriott guesses it's more than $100 million per seat.

"I personally think this is the best thing you can imagine. I think there is nothing at all bad about this," Garriott said.

On the other hand, he's hoping NASA won't decide to land on the moon and spend any time there.

"What NASA does best and what we should always challenge NASA to do is go to new places first," he said.

Garriott says there are good arguments for it. It's practice for setting up a base on Mars...when you're just 3 days away from Earth instead of 9 months. But in this astronaut's opinion, not if we're hoping to get to Mars in this lifetime.

"Is the delay of stopping off at the moon worth it? Is the gain that we would have for increased safety or proving grounds worth the delay that in my mind likely would push getting to Mars outside of our lifetimes and I'm going 'I don't see that much benefit,'" Garriott said.

Garriott says because people like himself and these 2 un-named SpaceX travelers are investing in commercial space-flight, the cost per seat for a trip to the stars will start to go way down.

"I think that we should all be very pleased and happy that we're now to the point where we can put government expeditions to Mars to go to science and commercial expeditions to Mars to bring back value or go start settlements," Garriott said.

See the rest here:

Back to the moon? Austin astronaut Richard Garriott talks space travel with FOX 7 - FOX 7 Austin

Exposure to radiation has always been a concern for those traveling in deep space. However, with thanks to a new type of vest called AstroRad, those concerns may soon be a thing of the past. Its been designed by a team over in Israel and is now ready for use on any manned mission to Mars.

The company behind the AstroRad Radiation Shield is StemRad. Based in Tel Aviv, the company has already produced a belt that protects rescue workers from radiation during nuclear disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl should one ever occur again. Add that to the newly designed vest, and everyones a winner. Mars offers no protection in its sparse atmosphere, so this kind of invention is vital if were really serious about putting people on Mars in the next few years.

The AstroRad consists of several layers of non-metallic materials to shield vital organs, and everyone will be tailor-made for each astronaut. StemRads CEO, Oren Milstein, said, This product will enable human deep space exploration. Our breakthrough has come in creating the architecture of the multi-layered shield to cover the most important organs accurately. Although the vest has already proven itself in simulations and the laboratory, StemRad will also be testing the product out onboard the Orion spacecraft in a joint venture between Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the European Space Agency.

Orion is due to launch late 2018 as an unmanned mission, but NASA is also considering sending two astronauts up on the same mission. During the flight, a dummy will be wearing one of the vests as well as a device to record the amount of radiation the dummy absorbs. Another dummy will travel alongside the one wearing a vest, but this one bare. The pair will be analyzed again upon returning to Earth. StemRads first example of the vest is to start being produced later thus year according to Milstein. He said, Based on our simulations, were sure it works but to be 100 percent sure, were sending it up on EM-1.

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The AstroRad Radiation Shield: The New Protective Vest for Deep Space - TrendinTech