Monthly Archives: March 2021

The next launch window for a NASA crew to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocketship has been pushed back by at least another two days, to no earlier than April 22, the space agency said.

SpaceX, the private rocket company of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, was previously scheduled to carry its second operational space station team into orbit for NASA in late March. But NASA announced in January that the target date had slipped to April 20.

The schedule was adjusted again on the basis of available flight times to the space station, driven by orbital mechanics, that would keep the astronauts need for sleep shifting to a minimum, NASA spokesman Dan Huot said on Monday.

The flight marks only the second full-fledged space station crew-rotation mission launched aboard a privately owned spacecraft a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket tipped with the Crew Dragon capsule it will carry into orbit.

The four-member SpaceX Crew-2 consists of two NASA astronauts, mission commander Shane Kimbrough and pilot Megan McArthur, along with Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and fellow mission specialist Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency.

After docking with the space station, they will join the four SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts who arrived in November, and cosmonauts carried to the orbiting outpost aboard a Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft.

The newly arrived Crew-2 are to remain in orbit six months, while Crew-1 is due to return to earth by early May.

McArthur will become the second person from her family to ride a Crew Dragon into space. Her husband, Bob Behnken, was one of two NASA astronauts on the very first manned Crew Dragon launch, a trial flight last August marking NASAs first human orbital mission from U.S. soil in nine years, following the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.

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NASA-SpaceX launch of next International Space Station crew delayed - The Japan Times

Russia and China have signed an agreement to build and work on an International Scientific Lunar Station orbiting the Moon, the countries space agencies announced Tuesday. The space powers had been in talks for months as Russia mulled over whether it would participate in NASAs Gateway program, a rival lunar space station to be built by a coalition of other countries in the next decade.

The International Scientific Lunar Station that Russia and China will work on is a complex of experimental research facilities created on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon, Roscosmos said in a statement. It will be designed to support a variety of research experiments with the possibility of long-term unmanned operation with the prospect of a human presence on the moon, the statement said.

Like NASA, China has been courting international support for its own plans to put infrastructure on the Moon. Its also sent several robotic Change missions to the Moon, including the first landing on the Moons far side and a swift sample retrieval mission in December.

The lunar space station agreement, signed virtually between Chinas space chief Zhang Kejian and Russias space chief Dmitry Rogozin, marks the latest development in Beijings efforts to explore the Moon alongside rivals like NASA, which is barred from working with China under a law passed by Congress in 2011.

Russia, which has maintained a decades-long partnership with NASA on the International Space Station, has been reluctant to extend its space alliance with the US to the Moon.

NASA stepped up its push to return astronauts on the Moon under the Trump administration through its Artemis program. Part of that push involved spearheading a multilateral pact called the Artemis Accords, an effort to set standards of behavior in space. Nine other countries have signed the Artemis Accords so far, but Russia is not among them, after the US sought to exclude Moscow from early talks on the Accords last year.

NASA secured agreements with the European Space Agency, Japan, and Canada for work on its Lunar Gateway, the planned space station orbiting the Moon. NASA did ask Russia to be a part of building that station, but Moscow decided that NASAs request for Russia to provide an airlock for Gateway was impractical, a Roscosmos spokesperson said in December.

NASA presented the Russian-American Memorandum of Understanding to Roscosmos concerning the cooperation within the Gateway project. The MoU suggested that Roscosmos commits to provide a crew airlock module, the spokesperson said. After studying the draft document, the participation of the Russian side to the volume suggested by the US partners was deemed impractical.

Russia soon pivoted its attentions to Chinas lunar ambitions. Cooperating with China became one of Russias top priorities last year, the spokesperson said.

The Russia-China agreement greenlights joint development of their own lunar space station, which calls for planning, demonstration, design, development, implementation, and operation of scientific research station projects, including project promotion to the international aerospace community, a statement from the China National Space Administration said.

It was unclear what specific technical contributions would be made by Russia, whose military-civil space agency has been investing in new launch infrastructure despite a domestic climate of budgetary rollbacks. Russias space budget ranks third globally, behind the United States and China.

China also held talks with Frances space agency CNES as a status check of the bilateral space cooperation between the two agencies, CNES said on Tuesday. Among cooperation on climate science, Beijings Kejian and Frances space chief Jean-Yves Le Gall also discussed other potential areas for cooperation in relation to the Moon and Mars, the statement said.

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Russia partners with China for lunar space station - The Verge

A Southeast Portland man is using his newfound hobby to connect kids to the International Space Station.

PORTLAND, Ore. You'll find Nikko Payne's home in Southeast Portland. It's pretty easy to spot by the large antenna atop his roof. Payne is an amateur ham radio operator and inside his garage/workshop he connects students to space, specifically the International Space Station.

"I've just been doing it for about a month now," Payne said. "Been waiting for my first contact and about two weeks ago I got my first."

Payne is part of a program called ARISS, which stands for Amateur Radio International Space Station. It's a worldwide group of volunteers. Payne is what you call a telebridge operator. He volunteers his time to make it possible for the kids to talk to the ISS astronauts.

"The children of course, they're awestruck by it," he said. "It's a once-in-lifetime-experience for them."

It's not a simple task, considering the space station is traveling at about 18,000 miles per hour, 25 times the speed of sound.

"It comes over our horizon like the sun does, but it sets in about 10 minutes," Payne said. "So we have 10 minutes to get 15 or 20 student questions in before the space station disappears over the horizon."

Portland's location on the west coast is ideal for this kind of contact. "I feel really lucky to be at 45 degrees North," Payne said.

With the space station at an altitude of only about 200 miles, Payne first calls the ISS astronauts on the radio. Then he connects them with a school over a telephone line in what resembles a Zoom meeting.

His most recent connection was Newcastle High School in Wyoming. "We've been working on this for about 18 months," said Newcastle High School science teacher Jim Stith.

The school was one of only a handful chosen to connect with the space station this year. Students got about 10 minutes to ask commander Michael Hopkins questions.

It was 10 minutes they won't soon forget.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said high school senior James Cox.

"He's just a normal guy," Stith said. "You think he's a rock star. He's an astronaut. He's just a normal guy who has a really cool day job.

"The best thing we can say is thank you. It is awesome that there are amateur radio operators that are able to dedicate their time and equipment to help other people."

For Payne, it's a chance to not only help, but to inspire the next generation of scientists.

"I think about how we can talk to somebody orbiting space all the time and I never lost the wonder of that," he said. "I just feel really lucky to be able to do it."

Any school can apply to be connected with the space station. There is an application on the ARISS website.

Excerpt from:
Portland man connects kids to International Space Station from his home - KGW.com

California's Orbital Assembly Corporation reckons it will soon have the solar system's first luxury space hotel open in orbit, offering spacewalks, Beyonce concerts and fine dining to space tourists at US$5 million for three and a half days.

The company plans to take advantage of plummeting space launch costs which SpaceX's Starship could bring down to a few hundred dollars a kilogram to build a giant circular space station, some 700 feet (212 m) in diameter, assembled in orbit by semi-autonomous and remote controlled robots. A hub-and-spoke wheel design similar to the ones Wernher Von Braun wrote about in the 1950s, the Voyager Space Station (VSS) would rotate slowly, at one and a quarter revolutions per minute, to provide artificial gravity about as strong as the moon's.

The VSS plans to accommodate around 100 crew, as well as 300 visitors be they tourists, business travelers, scientists, astronauts just passing through or long-term residents. It would be powered by solar and supplied from Earth.

Orbital Assembly Corporation

And yes, this will be no ISS; the Orbital Assembly team is going for the space equivalent of luxury. "Fundamentally, Voyager is a spacecraft," said Orbital CTO Dr. Tom Spilker during a recent fundraising presentation, "but not like any that have come before it. We don't want the Voyager experience to be like being in an attack submarine... We're architecting for comfort, especially for first-time tourists with no astronaut training."

Forget your squeezy ISS food tubes, the VSS aspires to fine dining and five-star entertainment. "Youre going to have the top chefs making really, really good food," Orbital CEO John Blincow told the Washington Post. "And when you pay $5 million to go someplace, its not going to be burgers and fries ... We want to have Sting come up and play, and Beyonc. Therell be two shows every night. Thats part of the entertainment package."

Well, that and the view of mother Earth turning slowly below you, a sight that might even tear one's eyes away from a pop star. Or the ability to pop outside for a spacewalk, which is also on the cards.

Orbital Assembly Corporation

The team wants to start assembling the VSS, in space, around 2026 but first, it plans to put a small-scale 40-meter (130 ft) "Gravity Ring" in orbit to prove its semi-automatic robotic construction tools, which will handle the job of assembly in zero-gravity.

How much is this all going to cost? "We do have confidence," said Chief Scientist and CVO Dr. Jeff Greenblatt, "that because we're approaching this in a very modular fashion, our fabrication and assembly costs will be a lot lower than historical. So ... depending on launch costs and it could be on the low end we're definitely looking in the tens of billions of dollars for the full construction of the station. And I'll just leave it there, because it's still a bit speculative at this point."

For context, the 22-year-old International Space Station is widely regarded as the most expensive thing constructed in history, costing somewhere around US$150 billion and capable of accommodating seven people in microgravity.

But don't worry, says Orbital, the VSS will have an opportunity to take a stab at a "serviceable obtainable market" of about US$147 billion per year, split between tourism, media, entertainment, advertising, life science research, electricity sales, microgravity manufacturing, refueling facilities for long-range spacecraft, deep-space communications services and the ability to house and service teams supervising the construction of space telescopes.

Orbital Assembly Corporation

Chief Business Officer James Wolff, Esquire, laid down the hard word on the live stream: "because you are a friend and a supporter, we would like to give you the chance to participate in this opportunity before we go to the institutional and strategic investors." He then directed watchers to Orbital Assembly's Netcapital fundraising page, where the company managed to raise the maximum US$1 million the platform allows.

Just a few tens of billions to go, then, but it might give Orbital the ability to move up from its current mailing address, which, when I search for it on Google Maps, appears to be buried in a local shopping mall, nestled in somewhere behind a Miss Donuts, a Clippings Hair Design, a Pure Barre and the Alta Loma Dance Academy.

Orbital Assembly is not the only group dreaming big when it comes to rotating space stations. In 2019, we reported on the Gateway Foundation's Von Braun Rotating Space Station, and its idea of funding it with some sort of space lottery, with an equal degree of skepticism. Indeed, it seems Orbital Assembly hopes its experience building its first two space rings might put it in a position to bid for construction duties on the Gateway project.

Orbital Assembly Corporation

It does seem clear that rotating space stations will be a key part of humanity's extra-planetary aspirations over the coming centuries. This kind of artificial gravity could allow people to stay in space longer with fewer debilitating physical side-effects. But the kind of low-gravity testing the VSS could provide doesn't need a 700-foot ring; you could do it with two small modules tied together, rotating around one another in orbit. And the space dilettante market's appetite for five-million-dollar long weekend getaways on a space station is yet to be tested.

On the other hand, SpaceX is taking great strides in its efforts to bring down space launch costs, and somebody's going to build a rotating space station one day. So hey, maybe these are the guys. You can enjoy the full fundraising presentation below, although don't get yourself too fired up; the investment round is closed.

"First Assembly" Virtual Event

Source: Orbital Assembly Corporation

The rest is here:
Orbital Assembly plans to build Voyager rotating space station in 2026 - New Atlas

The next launch window for a NASA crew to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocketship has been pushed back by at least another two days, to no earlier than April 22, the space agency said.

SpaceX, the private rocket company of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, was previously scheduled to carry its second operational space station team into orbit for NASA in late March. But NASA announced in January that the target date had slipped to April 20.

The schedule was adjusted again on the basis of available flight times to the space station, driven by orbital mechanics, that would keep the astronauts need for sleep shifting to a minimum, NASA spokesman Dan Huot said on Monday.

The flight marks only the second full-fledged space station crew-rotation mission launched aboard a privately owned spacecraft a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket tipped with the Crew Dragon capsule it will carry into orbit.

The four-member SpaceX Crew-2 consists of two NASA astronauts, mission commander Shane Kimbrough and pilot Megan McArthur, along with Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and fellow mission specialist Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency.

After docking with the space station, they will join the four SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts who arrived in November, and cosmonauts carried to the orbiting outpost aboard a Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft.

The newly arrived Crew-2 are to remain in orbit six months, while Crew-1 is due to return to earth by early May.

McArthur will become the second person from her family to ride a Crew Dragon into space. Her husband, Bob Behnken, was one of two NASA astronauts on the very first manned Crew Dragon launch, a trial flight last August marking NASAs first human orbital mission from U.S. soil in nine years, following the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. (Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Sam Holmes)

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SpaceX launch of next International Space Station crew pushed to April 22 - Saskatoon StarPhoenix

by: Andrew SpadaMar 9, 2021

Introducing The Space Station, our exclusive Audius playlist focused on exposing new and exciting music from independent artists.

Since 2009, Dancing Astronaut has been sharing music for the love of it. Like many electronic music fans, we grew up on Soundcloud. We got our start sharing mash-ups, bootlegs, and remixes from then unknown artists who were pioneering a new style of sound on the internet. Unfortunately, those days are far behind Soundcloud, but our crate-digging and music-sharing obsession is still going strong. And, if youre anything like us, youre sick and tired of seeing the same artists populating every EDM playlist on Spotify.

So where do you turn? The answer is simple; AUDIUS.

Finally, there is new platform thats as exciting as Soundcloud felt during those early years.

Every week, well be updating The Space Station. On it youll find some familiar faces and plenty youve never seen before and thats the point. No label plants. No walled gardens. No slotting fees. Just good music, updated every week.

This week weve got exciting new music from The Reindeers, Dillon Francis remixing Daft Punk, a bad ass edit of Breachs classic Jack, a Kanye West bootleg from back before Kim ruined him, a house highlight from Nick Martinez, and over 30 other tracks that you wont find anywhere else.

Were looking for submissions from creators and producers to submit their music to us to be featured on the playlist. No matter the genre, let us hear what youre making.

Tags: Audius, The Space Station

Categories: Music

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The Space Station - An Audius Exclusive Playlist: Week 2 - Dancing Astronaut - Dancing Astronaut