Daily Archives: April 5, 2017

Space expert says America's enemies could join forces and dominate the heavens

RUSSIA could be planning to abandon the International Space Station and build its own with the help of China.

The countrys Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, is also weighing up whether its necessary to have people in orbit and decide whether they could be replaced by robots.

Cover Images

Andrei Ionin, chief analyst of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, told Russian press that the Russian segment of the ISS may separate from the station after 2024.

He suggested Russia could join forceswith China to form a build a rival space station.

The space chief also revealedthat officials were in talks over whether to continue to send its cosmonauts to the low orbit satellite when Nasahands it over to the private sector in 2024.

Now is the time when one needs to make a decision about the ISSFor the time being, we are discussing different options, although one should have done it a lot earlier.

The space station of the future must also be an international project. Such projects need to be discussed long in advance.

getty

NASA/Bill Stafford

The key question here is not about the size of the station or its location in space whether it is going to orbit the Earth or the Moon. The key question is about international cooperation. We need to understand who our partners are.

All other questions are secondary.

Clearly, Russia and China can build such stations, but this is not a question of technologies or finance. Russia solves secondary questions related to modules and their functions. I believe that Russia and China can be very good partners at this point.

The move would be a a blow to diplomatic efforts in space.

The International System, in recent years, has been seen as a symbol of unity as well as a tool for science.

Its current crew members are made up of four Russians and two Americans.

Brit Major Tim Peake lived on the station between December 2015 and 2016, and is expected to return again.

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368

View original post here:
Russia hints at plans to abandon the International Space Station and build rival base with China - The Sun

5573285

A space station could be circling the Red Planet by 2028 to serve as a Mars Base Camp for wayward explorers, according to plans published by a major NASA contractor.

Lockheed Martin plans to construct a 132-ton space station around Mars capable of hosting six astronauts for a year, according to plans released by the company Monday. For comparison, the International Space Station(ISS)weighs about 440 tons.

The six astronauts at the Lockheed station would remotely operate rovers, analyze samples of dirt and rock and even make short trips to Marss two moons. Having humans in an orbiting station would simplify rover operations and eliminate the delay of up to 24 minutes of sending a signal between Earth and Mars.

One scientist, however, is skeptical the stations benefits will be enough to justify building the station.

It might make sense to do a Mars orbital mission, or even a Mars flyby mission, before a Mars landing, to mature the flight technology, in the same sense that Apollo 8 was a useful prelude to the Moon landing, Dr. Robert Zubrin, who helped design plans for NASAs manned mission to Mars and wrote the The Case For Mars, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

But it does not make sense to devise a human Mars exploration program around basing humans in Mars orbit to operate rovers on the surface, Zubrin said. Human explorers are needed on the surface of Mars, not in orbit.

WATCH:

Lockheed Martin claims a space station around Mars would be affordable, but the company did not include any cost estimates for the program. The station could be reused and serve as a staging point to collect imagery and scientific data from multiple sites.

Zubrin told TheDCNF astronauts will be going to Mars in either a search for knowledge or as a prelude to eventual human settlement. Determining if Mars has or has had life would require a human astronaut on the surface, he said.

A human explorer on the surface of Mars can do a thousand times as much as a robotic rover, regardless of from where the rover is being controlled, Zubrin said. In short, if you want to go to Mars, you need to go to Mars. Hanging out in orbit doesnt cut it.

NASA plans to send astronauts on several missions to orbit the moon in the 2020s to help train astronauts for a manned mission to Mars. Zubrin previously told TheDCNF that if given proper direction by President Trump, NASA could probably send astronauts to Mars by the end of his second term, as opposed to 16 years in the future.

Trump vowed to unlock the mysteries of space in his inaugural address and has met with billionaire Elon Musk, who founded the private space company SpaceX.

Vice President Mike Pence met with Apollo 11 astronaut and Mars mission advocate Buzz Aldrin in March to talk about the future of U.S. space programs.

Trumps Mars and moon missions will likely utilize the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. President Barack Obama tried for years to eliminate the SLS, but Congress kept money flowing to the project.

Obama took money from space exploration programs to fund earth science and global warming programs. Trump could free up money for his space plans by slashing the more than $2 billion NASA spends on these programs.

The U.S. is better prepared to visit Mars than it was to visit the moon in the 1960s, according to a study by NASAs Johnson Space Center. Current plans to send astronauts to Mars are projected to cost about $35 billion by 2025 to arrive at the Red Planet in 2030.

Follow Andrew on Twitter

Send tips to andrew@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [emailprotected].

Read the original here:
NASA Wants A Space Station Around Mars By 2028, But Major Scientists Aren't So Sure [VIDEO] - Daily Caller

During his more than two decades in the Air Force, Col. Jack Fischer has gone from the classrooms of the Air Force Academy to the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan in an F-15 and to the cockpit of an F-22 as a test pilot.

But Fischer's next move will take him farther than he's ever been before: Outer space.

Fischer will become America's newest astronaut on April 20, when he blasts off in a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, bound for the International Space Station. Fischer will spend at least four and a half months maybe as long as 6 months helping conduct some 300 experiments on everything from new technologies for exploration to creating lighter and stronger alloys to new medicines.

In interviews with reporters on Tuesday, Fischer speaking from Russia's Star City near Moscow, where he was undergoing his final training said he's "unbelievably excited" and that this journey will allow him to achieve the dream he's had since he was young.

"The first time I went for a jet ride or the first time I flew in the Raptor, you knew it was going to be awesome, but you didn't know it was going to be that awesome," he said. "I think [the blastoff] here in a couple of weeks is going to be an amazing experience that I can't even comprehend at this point. I can't wait to, once the final [rocket] stages kick off and we're actually floating in orbit, to look out the window and see the Earth in its entirety without borders, without boundaries."

Fischer said his grandfather used to work at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and he got to visit the facility when he was six years old. He said he was awestruck at the massive Saturn V rocket laying on its side there.

"I just walked up to it and thought it was the coolest thing that I had ever seen," Fischer said.

Then-Maj. Jack Fischer poses in front of an F-22A Raptor at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Fischer, a 1996 Air Force Academy graduate, was one of nine new astronauts selected for NASA's 2009 astronaut candidate class. Photo Credit: Air Force Fischer, of Louisville, Colorado, graduated from the academy in 1996 with a degree in astronautical engineering and got a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT two years later. He learned to fly F-15E Strike Eagles at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, flew two combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and attended Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He tested weapons at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida before returning to Edwards in 2006 to test the F-22 Raptor.

Fischer was selected for NASA's 20th astronaut class in 2009 and finished two years later.

There is a chance Fischer will be able to make a spacewalk to work on the space station's exterior, which has him "super-excited."

"The only thing between you and space is a little suit," Fischer said when describing his enthusiasm for the possible spacewalk.

Fischer said that freed from gravity, the space station crew will be able to conduct experiments with the potential to help many people. For example, the station will work on a substance that can act as synthetic bone, which could potentially help trauma victims and the military.

"Without the constraints of gravity and convection and sedimentation, we're able to do some pretty cool things with alloys as well as crystals and proteins," Fischer said. "They can form perfectly, which allows us to look at new ways to study the human body, to look at immune system effects, to look for new drugs."

He described one device that he trained on in Japan that melted pellets of various substances with lasers and then rapidly cooled them to make new materials as "one of the coolest experiments that we have on the station."

Fischer said his test pilot training taught him to pay attention to even the smallest details, which will help him observe tiny, unexpected developments as the experiments progress.

Training for his first space mission includes lessons as varied as how to put on a space suit to how to fix a wall in space, Fischer said. And it can be tricky especially since everything has to be done in Russian.

"If you're not good with languages, it's a bugger," Fischer said. "Russian is a tough language, so I've had my hands full. But the people here, the culture, the community, our office and our support system is second to none. Obviously the instructors are top notch. We work together well as a community, so it hasn't been that bad."

Expedition 51 crew members Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency, left, and U.S. Air Force Col. Jack Fischer of NASA, right, pose for pictures in front of a Soyuz spacecraft mockup March 31 during final qualification exams at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. The men will launch April 20 on the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a four and a half month mission on the International Space Station. Photo Credit: Rob Navias/NASA Fischer has been working side-by-side with cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who will fly with him in the Soyuz, for much of the last three years. The two now know each other so well, Fischer jokingly compared them to an "old married couple."

"I can look over and understand, from a grunt or a motion that he makes with his shoulders, what he's thinking and what he wants me to do," Fischer said. "I think we've gotten to be a pretty darn good team."

Fischer and Yurchikhin are scheduled to fly down to Baikonur on Wednesday morning, where they will be quarantined for about two weeks before the launch and conduct final pre-launch training. That two-week stretch will be "pretty laid back" compared to the intense training he's undergone so far, he said.

Having deployed for the Air Force several times in the past, Fischer is used to saying goodbye to his family for months on end. But due to the quarantine this time, saying goodbye behind glass will be unusual, he said and a little more dramatic with the rocket launch.

"It's a little tougher for the family," Fischer said. "You make sure that you don't have anything left unsaid."

Looking to the future, Fischer said he'd like to see America build the technologies and infrastructure necessary to get humans to Mars. But, he said, if the administration decides "a pit stop to the Moon" is needed to perfect the technology, that could be a good step on the path towards Mars. And, in a few years, he would love to return to space in NASA's new Orion spacecraft.

When asked if he thought humans would ever make contact with extraterrestrials, Fischer said, "I sure hope they do! That's why we explore, is to find them. Someday, I sure hope we meet them."

Perhaps not surprisingly for an Air Force test pilot-turned-astronaut, Fischer's favorite space movie is "The Right Stuff," which tells the story of the beginnings of the space program and the original Mercury 7 astronauts.

Fischer said astronauts and cosmonauts on the space station relax by watching movies and having long conversations about their families or other subjects over dinner.

But perhaps their favorite pastime is taking advantage of the amazing view and taking as many photographs as they can, he said.

"It is such a unique perspective, that we do our very best to capture that perspective and share it with the world," Fischer said. "You have realize that spaceflight is a gift, and you have to make the most of it."

See the original post here:
Meet America's next astronaut: From F-15 combat to the International Space Station - AirForceTimes.com

KOUROU: Around 30 protest leaders in French Guiana attempted to occupy a rocket-launching space centre on Tuesday (Apr 4) as part of demonstrations that have crippled the territory in South America for 10 days.

Workers have launched protests and strikes demanding pay raises and improved public safety, creating a fresh crisis in the last few weeks of outgoing president Francois Hollande's unpopular term in office.

Labour leaders rejected a government offer of a billion-dollar aid package on Monday and are demanding US$2.5 billion instead for a "Marshall Plan" to develop the often overlooked overseas territory.

After visiting the world-renowned French space centre in Kourou on Tuesday to meet its director, about 30 leaders said they would not leave until the government met their demands.

"We won't move. The situation is stuck and Guiana is blocked. You are blocked. We want the billions we have asked for," protest leader Manuel Jean-Baptiste told the director of the space centre.

The Kourou centre has become a symbol of economic disparity in Guiana, a heavily-forested landmass wedged between Suriname and Brazil on the northeastern shoulder of Latin America.

On Mar 20, angry residents blocked the planned launch of a rocket that was to place into orbit satellites for Brazilian and South Korean operators, in one of the first signs of public anger there.

Rundown homes and potholed streets ring the Kourou centre - and these are for the relatively lucky few in a territory where many of the 244,000-strong population live without electricity or running water.

"Kourou is a political, technological and financial success. It is the flagship of European technology," Youri Antoinette, an engineer at the space centre and spokesman for the residents of Kourou, told AFP.

"But once you leave the space centre, you're in an under-developed country."

The unemployment rate in Guiana is 23 per cent - and nearly twice this for 18-25-year-olds - while per capita income is about half of the rate in mainland France.

Guiana has been administered as a French region since the end of 18th century and it was also used as a place to send convicts for forced labour between 1852 and 1946.

Read this article:
Demonstrators occupy French space station in Guiana - Channel NewsAsia