Daily Archives: November 9, 2019

(TNS) A bipartisan group of senators proposed a bill Wednesday that would fund NASA for the next fiscal year and extend U.S. operations of the International Space Station through 2030.

The measure, called the NASA Authorization Act of 2019, is co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and directs Congress to provide the space agency with $22.8 billion for fiscal year 2020.

The bill would, among other things, extend authorization for the space station through 2030 and direct NASA to take steps to grow the space economy, said Cruz, a Texas Republican who chairs the aviation and space subcommittee.

U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, and Roger Wicker, a Republican, are co-sponsors.

The NASA authorization bill is one step in a long budget process. If passed, it would still require Congress to pass an appropriations bill to fund the items listed in the bill. The $22.8 billion proposal for NASAs budget marks a slight increase from last years $21.5 billion budget, which was $1.6 billion more than President Donald Trump's original 2019 proposal for the space agency.

Trumps 2020 budget proposal included $21 billion for NASA, a slight decrease from 2019. He later requested an additional $1.6 billion to expedite NASAs Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.

Federal funding for the 20-year-old space station currently is scheduled to end after 2024, but Congress can extend that date, and has in the past. Experts have said the space station can operate safely until at least 2030. The legislation calls for the U.S. maintaining a continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit through and beyond the useful life of the ISS.

Astronauts from the U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe serve on the space station, from which crews conduct a range of experiments.

The measure would also make NASAs stated goal of returning to the Moon and a future journey to Mars a national goal.

Not only will this legislation help ensure Americans safely return to the moon, it will help ensure Americas dreams of taking the first step on the surface of Mars become a reality, Cruz said.

However, the bill identifies 2028 as the target date for a return to the lunar surface, a break from the Trump Administrations stated goal of getting humans back to the Moon by 2024.

NASA has been scrambling to meet the expedited timeline in the wake of March comments by Vice President Mike Pence directing the agency to accelerate that timeline to 2024 using any means necessary. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has said the Artemis moon program could cost up to $30 billion, but the agency has not provided a budget plan to Congress.

The bill would also support the development of next-generation spacesuits, as well as life and physical science research, to ensure that humans can live in deep space safely. NASA engineers demonstrated the new Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit or xEMU spacesuits in Washington in October, which will allow astronauts to reach down and touch the lunar surface.

NASA has been working on new spacesuits for more than a decade an effort that has stumbled, in part, because of inadequate funding. The suits currently worn by astronauts during spacewalks outside the space station are 40 years old and reaching the end of their lifespan.

The legislation also bolsters NASAs efforts to detect asteroids that could threaten Earth in the near future. It directs NASA to develop a dedicated division to launch space-based infrared survey telescope to detect near-Earth objects.

2019 the Houston Chronicle.Distributed byTribune Content Agency, LLC.

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New Bill Would Extend U.S. Operation of Space Station - Government Technology

The International Space Station has taken delivery of 12 bottles of fine French wine, after they were flown up to astronauts aboard a rocket.

But the recipients won't actually be able to drink them: they are there not for enjoying, but for ageing.

The red Bordeaux wine will age for a year up there before returning to Earth. Researchers will study how weightlessness and space radiation affect the ageing process. The goal is to develop new flavours and properties for the food industry.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

The bottles flew up aboard a Northrop Grumman capsule that launched from Virginia on Saturday and arrived at the International Space Station on Monday. Each bottle was packed in a metal canister to prevent breakage.

Universities in Bordeaux, France, and Bavaria, Germany, are taking part in the experiment from Space Cargo Unlimited, a Luxembourg startup.

The eye of Hurricane Dorian as captured by Nasa astronaut Nick Hague from onboard the International Space Station (ISS) on 3 September

Nasa/EPA

The River Nile and its delta captured at night from the ISS on 2 September

Nasa

The galaxy Messier 81, located in the northern constellation of Ursa Major, as seen by Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope

Nasa/JPL-Caltech

The flight path Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft is seen in this long exposure photograph as it launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 25 September

Nasa/Bill Ingalls

Danielson Crater, an impact crater in the Arabia region of Mars, as captured by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft

Nasa/JPL-Caltech

A team rehearses landing and crew extraction from Boeing's CST-100 Starliner, which will be used to carry humans to the International Space Station at the White Sands Missile Range outside Las Cruces, New Mexico

Nasa/Bill Ingalls

Bound for the International Space Station, the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 25 September

Nasa/Bill Ingalls

Hurricane Dorian as seen from the ISS on 2 September

Nasa

A string of tropical cyclones streams across Earth's northern hemisphere in this picture taken from the ISS on 4 September

Nasa

The city of New York as seen from the ISS on 11 September

Nasa

The eye of Hurricane Dorian as captured by Nasa astronaut Nick Hague from onboard the International Space Station (ISS) on 3 September

Nasa/EPA

The River Nile and its delta captured at night from the ISS on 2 September

Nasa

The galaxy Messier 81, located in the northern constellation of Ursa Major, as seen by Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope

Nasa/JPL-Caltech

The flight path Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft is seen in this long exposure photograph as it launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 25 September

Nasa/Bill Ingalls

Danielson Crater, an impact crater in the Arabia region of Mars, as captured by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft

Nasa/JPL-Caltech

A team rehearses landing and crew extraction from Boeing's CST-100 Starliner, which will be used to carry humans to the International Space Station at the White Sands Missile Range outside Las Cruces, New Mexico

Nasa/Bill Ingalls

Bound for the International Space Station, the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 25 September

Nasa/Bill Ingalls

Hurricane Dorian as seen from the ISS on 2 September

Nasa

A string of tropical cyclones streams across Earth's northern hemisphere in this picture taken from the ISS on 4 September

Nasa

The city of New York as seen from the ISS on 11 September

Nasa

Winemaking uses both yeast and bacteria, and involves chemical processes, making wine ideal for space study, said University of Erlangen-Nuremberg's Michael Lebert, the experiment's scientific director, in a company video.

The space-aged wine will be compared to Bordeaux wine aged on Earth. What's left will go to those who helped pay for the research, according to a company spokeswoman.

This is the first of six space missions planned by the company over the next three years touching on the future of agriculture given our changing world.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure," Nicolas Gaume, chief executive and co-founder of Space Cargo Unlimited, said in a statement.

NASA is opening the space station to more business opportunities like this and, eventually, even private astronaut missions.

The Cygnus capsule that pulled up to the space station on Monday contains multiple commercial ventures. Also on board: an oven for baking chocolate chip cookies, as well as samples of carbon fibre used by Italy's Lamborghini in its sports cars.

Budweiser has already sent barley seeds to the station, with an eye to becoming the beverage of choice on Mars. In 2015, a Japanese company known for its whiskey and other alcoholic drinks sent up samples. Scotch also made a visit to space in another experiment.

As for high-flying wine cellars, this isn't the first. A French astronaut took along a bottle of wine aboard shuttle Discovery in 1985. The bottle remained corked in orbit.

The space station's current crew includes three Americans, two Russians and an Italian.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

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International Space Station receives a dozen bottles of fine wine - The Independent

Illustration depicting a Type I X-ray burst. The explosion first blows off the hydrogen layer, which expands and ultimately dissipates. Then rising radiation builds to the point where it blows off the helium layer, which overtakes the expanding hydrogen. Some of the X-rays emitted in the blast scatter off of the accretion disk. The fireball then quickly cools, and the helium settles back onto the surface. Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA)

NASAs Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope on the International Space Station detected a sudden spike of X-rays at about 10:04 p.m. EDT on August 20, 2019. The burst was caused by a massive thermonuclear flash on the surface of a pulsar, the crushed remains of a star that long ago exploded as a supernova.

The X-ray burst, the brightest seen by NICER so far, came from an object named SAX J1808.4-3658, or J1808 for short. The observations reveal many phenomena that have never been seen together in a single burst. In addition, the subsiding fireball briefly brightened again for reasons astronomers cannot yet explain.

Once the helium layer is a few meters deep, the conditions allow helium nuclei to fuse into carbon. Then the helium erupts explosively and unleashes a thermonuclear fireball across the entire pulsar surface. Zaven Arzoumanian, Deputy Principal Investigator for NICER

This burst was outstanding, said lead researcher Peter Bult, an astrophysicist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the University of Maryland, College Park. We see a two-step change in brightness, which we think is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface, and other features that will help us decode the physics of these powerful events.

The explosion, which astronomers classify as a Type I X-ray burst, released as much energy in 20 seconds as the Sun does in nearly 10 days. The detail NICER captured on this record-setting eruption will help astronomers fine-tune their understanding of the physical processes driving the thermonuclear flare-ups of it and other bursting pulsars.

A pulsar is a kind of neutron star, the compact core left behind when a massive star runs out of fuel, collapses under its own weight, and explodes. Pulsars can spin rapidly and host X-ray-emitting hot spots at their magnetic poles. As the object spins, it sweeps the hot spots across our line of sight, producing regular pulses of high-energy radiation.

J1808 is located about 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. It spins at a dizzying 401 rotations each second, and is one member of a binary system. Its companion is a brown dwarf, an object larger than a giant planet yet too small to be a star. A steady stream of hydrogen gas flows from the companion toward the neutron star, and it accumulates in a vast storage structure called an accretion disk.

This burst was outstanding! Peter Bult, an astrophysicist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

Gas in accretion disks doesnt move inward easily. But every few years, the disks around pulsars like J1808 become so dense that a large amount of the gas becomes ionized, or stripped of its electrons. This makes it more difficult for light to move through the disk. The trapped energy starts a runaway process of heating and ionization that traps yet more energy. The gas becomes more resistant to flow and starts spiraling inward, ultimately falling onto the pulsar.

Hydrogen raining onto the surface forms a hot, ever-deepening global sea. At the base of this layer, temperatures and pressures increase until hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium nuclei, which produces energy a process at work in the core of our Sun.

The helium settles out and builds up a layer of its own, said Goddards Zaven Arzoumanian, the deputy principal investigator for NICER and a co-author of the paper. Once the helium layer is a few meters deep, the conditions allow helium nuclei to fuse into carbon. Then the helium erupts explosively and unleashes a thermonuclear fireball across the entire pulsar surface.

Astronomers employ a concept called the Eddington limit named for English astrophysicist SirArthur Eddington to describe the maximum radiation intensity a star can have before that radiation causes the star to expand. This point depends strongly on the composition of the material lying above the emission source.

Our study exploits this longstanding concept in a new way, said co-author Deepto Chakrabarty, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. We are apparently seeing the Eddington limit for two different compositions in the same X-ray burst. This is a very powerful and direct way of following the nuclear burning reactions that underlie the event.

As the burst started, NICER data show that its X-ray brightness leveled off for almost a second before increasing again at a slower pace. The researchers interpret this stall as the moment when the energy of the blast built up enough to blow the pulsars hydrogen layer into space.

The fireball continued to build for another two seconds and then reached its peak, blowing off the more massive helium layer. The helium expanded faster, overtook the hydrogen layer before it could dissipate, and then slowed, stopped and settled back down onto the pulsars surface. Following this phase, the pulsar briefly brightened again by roughly 20 percent for reasons the team does not yet understand.

During J1808s recent round of activity, NICER detected another, much fainter X-ray burst that displayed none of the key features observed in the Aug. 20 event.

In addition to detecting the expansion of different layers, NICER observations of the blast reveal X-rays reflecting off of the accretion disk and record the flickering of burst oscillations X-ray signals that rise and fall at the pulsars spin frequency but that occur at different surface locations than the hot spots responsible for its normal X-ray pulses.

A paper describing the findings has been published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

NICER is an Astrophysics Mission of Opportunity within NASAs Explorer program, which provides frequent flight opportunities for world-class scientific investigations from space utilizing innovative, streamlined, and efficient management approaches within the heliophysics and astrophysics science areas. NASAs Space Technology Mission Directorate supports the SEXTANT component of the mission, demonstrating pulsar-based spacecraft navigation.

Reference: A NICER Thermonuclear Burst from the Millisecond X-Ray Pulsar SAX J1808.43658 by Peter Bult, Gaurava K. Jaisawal, Tolga Gver, Tod E. Strohmayer, Diego Altamirano, Zaven Arzoumanian, David R. Ballantyne, Deepto Chakrabarty, Jrme Chenevez, Keith C. Gendreau, Sebastien Guillot and Renee M. Ludlam, 23 October 2019, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab4ae1

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Record-Setting X-Ray Burst From Massive Thermonuclear Blast Detected From Space Station - SciTechDaily

tech2 News StaffNov 07, 2019 14:58:07 IST

AproposedIndian Space Station planned for launch in 2024-2026, for which the Indian Space Research Organisation has set things in motion, will have enough room for three astronauts aboard.

While plans are still in very early stages, and will onlykick into high gear after the Gaganyaan mission slated for January 2022, initial designs of the space station have already been sketched, according to a report in The Times of India.

The report suggests that the space station will bea 20-tonne modular abode,that can be built andused independently in different systems.The station will orbit the Earth in the low-Earth orbit (LEO) at an altitude of 120-140 kilometres.

The Chinese Tiangong-1 space station before the fall.

ISROintends to send three Indian astronauts to space on the 'Gaganyaan' rocket, andreturn themsafely in the same crew module after spending seven days in orbit.While foremost a technology demonstrator mission,the Gaganyaan mission will see the astronaut trio travel to Earth's orbit and carry out scientific experiments for seven days in the zero-gravity of low-Earth orbit. The crew module will be launched onthe Geosynchronous Satellite Launch VehicleMark-III (GSLV-MkIII), placing the 7,800-kgGaganyaan spacecraftto low-Earth orbit.

Once the mission is complete, ISRO intends to use the technologies from Gaganyaan the orbital module, life-support system, and human-rated launch vehicles, for example in subsequent space station programs. This will be made possibleunder the aegis of the newly-instituted Human Spaceflight Centreunder ISRO.

On May 2019,ISRO and IAF signed an MoUto cooperate in the crew selection and training of astronauts for the Gaganyaan mission. Gaganyaan is going to be Indias first-ever manned mission to space. It will send three astronauts for seven days and the spacecraft will be placed in a low-earth orbit of around 300-400 km.

Before sending the astronauts, two unmanned missions will be conducted by ISRO. The GSLV Mk III, the three-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle, will be used to launch Gaganyaan as it has the necessary payload capability.

The Human Space Flight Centre in Bengaluru will be looking at all the activities about the mission along with the Institute of Aerospace Medicine.

Also Read:

Gaganyaan: Training for astronaut candidates begins in Russia, but still no women test pilots who 'qualify'?

Gaganyaan: Russia to train Indian cosmonauts, offer semi-cryogenic engine tech

India plans to have an orbiting space station by 2030 here's what we can expect

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Indias planned space station to reportedly have room for three astronauts aboard it - Firstpost

adidas has team up with a number of brands, persons and the likes in recent times, creating memorable collaborations along the way. This week, the team announced a partnership that is truly out of this world, partnering with the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory. The partnership is aimed at pushing the boundaries of technology to test and create new and innovative products, human performance and sustainability.

As part of the adidas and ISS National Labs commitment to new enhancements in their respective fields, the teams will pursue breakthrough to improve future designs and engineering for athletes both on and off Earth. With the support of the ISS National Lab and technologies developed by NASA, the collaboration focuses on product innovation, whereby the brand is set to become the first to test footwear innovation in the extremes of space. The main focus of the testing covers adidas Boost technology, without the stresses of gravity. The aim is to provide more enhanced comfort on existing models. Another of the tests will feature its range of footballs, which were delivered to the NASA-contracted SpaceX CRS-18 cargo mission a few months back. The tests involve the spherical aerodynamics of the ball, along with the panel shapes and textures.

Future tests are set to involve pushing the limits of human performance and sustainability through various research elements. The research will draw insights from the astronaut training regimen, whereby they endure the harshest of physical tests and conditions, which could provide potential learnings for athletes. The zero-gravity environment of space provides the ultimate testing ground to maximise material usage and value in extreme conditions and confined environments. One of the goals from the testing is also to advance sustainable creation and recreation methods to save the planet.

Watch the video below on some of the designs and testing:

The testing of the adidas partnership with the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory is set to begin in 2020. The team will send its Boost pellets and footwear to the space station via a SpaceX cargo mission. The experiments will be conducted by the astronauts onboard the ISS.

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adidas Partners with International Space Station National Lab - Fortress of Solitude