Daily Archives: May 2, 2017

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WSPA)Three South Carolina high school students whose experiment was chosen for the International Space Station have gotten the results back. Tevin Glover, Parker Matthews, and Cedric McQueen are all sophomores at Keenan High in Columbia and had their experiment chosen after a contest.

The experiment used starch mixed with water to see if the microgravity of space would affect the transparency of the mixture, called its turbidity. They had a sample here on earth, called a ground truth, for comparison.

Cedric McQueen says, After we measured the turbidity, our ground truth and the experiment we sent up to space had the same turbidity, so it showed microgravity didnt really have any effect on the turbidity of the liquid, so basically that means the starch concentration, it wasnt affected.

The experiment has implications for the ability to grow plants in space or on other planets, something that will be crucial to mans ability to travel greater distances in space. Tevin Glover says, If all this light can pass through the substance on the ground and all the light can also pass through in microgravity, then that shows that we can have plant growth in space.

They plan to design other experiments to test other variables.

The fact that they had an experiment chosen for the space station has made them celebrities on campus, and their science and engineering teacher, Kareem Beckett, says hell use their example with other students. Theyre like the first ones to do it, and Im quite sure that were going to have other competitions for the students to actually be able to compete to do activities like this, he says.

See the original post here:
SC students get results back from space station experiment - WSPA.com

Share

Share

Share

Email

A week after the successful launch of its first cargo spacecraft, the Tianzhou-1, China announced its plans to build its own permanent base in space similar to the International Space Station.

According to Chinese officials, the planned base in orbit will take them a step closer to becoming a major space power. Construction of the ambitious project is set to commence in about two years.

Chinas Tianzhou-1 spacecraft completed the first of three planned docking attempts with the orbiting space lab Tiangong-2 two days after it was launched on April 20. Directed by the China National Space Administration, the five-day refueling was successfully completed on Thursday, reports Daily Mail.

This again announces the ambition and aspiration of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people, and our resolute confidence in becoming a major space power, Wang Zhaoyao, the space station projects supervisor was quoted as saying.

After completing experimental stage spaceflight missions, we will enter the development and construction phase. According to our plans, we will carry out the assembly and construction of Chinas manned space station between 2019 and 2022.

The announcement also comes after news of the Chinese and European space agencies reported possible collaboration to construct a base on the moon. The proposed Moon Village was disclosed by the director-general of the European Space Agency ESA, Johann-Dietrich Woerner.The report was later confirmed by CNSA secretary general Tian Yulong and verified by ESA spokesperson, Pal Hvistendahl.

(Visited 154 times, 83 visits today)

Read the original:
China to Start Building Its Own Orbital Space Station in Two Years - NextShark

By Chelsea Whyte

NASA is running out of space suits, and new ones are years away from being flight-ready. This was the finding of an audit released on 26 April by the NASA Office of Inspector General, relating to the agencys three next-generation spacesuit development projects.

Future missions might send humans deeper into space than ever before, so new suits need to be designed to handle the challenging conditions. Recent efforts, which have not been linked to a specific mission or destination, have cost almost $200 million since 2007 but have yet to produce a suitable option for deep-space missions.

The suits currently used during spacewalks from the International Space Station, called Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU), were designed more than 40 years ago and were intended to last 15 years.

NASA currently uses 11 of the 18 original backpack-like life support systems, which were updated with glove heaters, improved lights and cameras, and an emergency propulsion module in the 1990s. The most recent loss of one of these suits happened during the 2015 explosion of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which was ferrying cargo to the ISS.

Yet US involvement on the space station is funded until 2024. NASA will be challenged to continue to support ISS needs with the current fleet of EMUs through 2024, a challenge that will escalate significantly if Station operations are extended to 2028, the report says.

Over the past decade, NASAs focus on developing new spacesuits has been split between three programmes. The Constellation Space Suit System was being designed for use on missions for the Constellation Program, which was canceled in 2010. Despite that, NASA continued to pay to develop spacesuit technologies for six years after the cancellation, ultimately spending $135 million.

The Advanced Space Suit Project was meant to develop suits with more mobility to sustain astronauts on a mission to Mars. The Orion Crew Survival System was a design for a spacesuit that could withstand fire, smoke or toxic chemicals if there was an emergency on the launch pad.

Any of these would need to be far enough along in the design process to be tested on the ISS before the end of the programme in 2024, and at current funding levels that may not be possible, according to the report.

Inspector General Paul Martin recommended that NASA end the Constellation spacesuit design contract and develop a plan for producing and testing next-generation spacesuits on the ISS before 2024.

William Gerstenmaier, head of Human Exploration and Operations for NASA, said in a response letter that the report is a fair assessment of the current state of extravehicular spacesuits and accepted the recommendations, although he said the report is overly critical of the Constellation Space Suit System and that the technology developed for it may be used to improve current suits.

Read more: NASA rushes spacesuit repair kit to space station

More on these topics:

Read more here:
NASA might run out of space suits before it quits the ISS - New Scientist