Monthly Archives: June 2022

Garver said her efforts to reform NASA as deputy administrator from 2009 to 2013 in particular, canceling the Constellation space vehicle program that fizzled after four years and billions of dollars ran headlong into the trillion-dollar military-industrial complex.

I was attacked by Democrats and Republicans in Congress, by the aerospace industry, and by hero astronauts for proposing an agenda that didnt suit their parochial interests, she writes in Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age, which she shared with POLITICO ahead of publication.

Garver, who joined NASA in 1996 and held a series of increasingly senior posts, accuses her former boss, Charles Bolden, the first Black NASA administrator, of multiple leadership failures from presiding over declining diversity in the astronaut corps to doing the bidding of entrenched interests and their backers in Congress.

She calls out aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin and their suppliers for greedily pushing NASA leaders and Congress to initiate the $23 billion-and-counting Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule that she fears will bankrupt the space program before it ever returns astronauts to the moon.

Garver accuses lawmakers in both parties of continuing to put their own political interests above NASAs.

She says one of the biggest impediments to reform was Bill Nelson, the former U.S. senator from Florida who represented Kennedy Space Center and now runs NASA.

It was Nelson, she writes, who led the opposition to the Commercial Crew Program the novel public-private partnership she championed that culminated in 2020 with SpaceXs Crew Dragon returning American astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil for the first time in a decade.

Garver contends that if Nelson and Bolden had their way a decade ago, the United States would still be dependent on Russia to send astronauts to the space station.

And Nelson, she says, who along with then-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison forced on us the SLS, the taxpayer-funded mega-moon rocket that is years behind schedule, billions over cost and slated to finally make its first uncrewed flight this summer.

NASA on Monday again had to prematurely halt the practice countdown for SLS, including fueling the rocket, in what was its fourth attempt.

People dont want to be critical of our current leadership, Garver said in an interview. And Senator Nelson is now Administrator Nelson. We are still at a point where it is not exactly clear weve developed something that is sustainable for deep space.

But is she concerned about how her book will be received by Nelson, Bolden or others she worked so closely with?

Im not passive-aggressive, Garver told POLITICO. They have been. They have blocked me from things. I think they very clearly are not going to like it.

Garver admitted she had not anticipated that Nelson would be running the space program when her memoir came out. I was nearly done with this book when he was appointed, she said. It did give me pause. My publisher loved it. Im like, oh, man.

NASA and Nelson, through a spokesperson, declined to respond to the charges and criticisms that Garver levels in her book. Bolden and the prime contractors for the SLS program also did not respond to requests to comment.

Garver, who after she left NASA ran the Air Line Pilots Association, also takes direct aim at what she calls NASAs male-dominated and military culture.

She notes in the book that all 14 NASA administrators have been men and only two of the 134 Space Shuttle missions were helmed by women. She also labels the pledge to land the first woman on the moon first by the Trump administration and now the Biden White House as little more than a marketing gimmick.

And despite her own success moving up the chain, women have also been openly denigrated, she writes.

Many who disagreed with my views attacked me with vulgar, gendered language, depredation, and physical threats, Garver, now 61, writes in the book. Ive been called an ugly whore, a motherf-cking b-tch, and a c-nt; told I need to get laid, and asked if Im on my period or going through menopause.

Garver also blames predominantly white male group think at NASA and in Congress as contributing heavily to NASAs troubled record of programs that are years behind schedule and costing billions more than advertised.

She takes particular aim at Nelson. She recounts how the then-senator, while pushing for the SLS also tried to block the public-private Commercial Crew program that helped to finance the SpaceX Crew Dragon.

Garver refers to Nelson in the book as a lifetime politician most known for his out-of-this-world political junket in 1986: a taxpayer-funded ride on the Space Shuttle. (Bolden piloted the mission as an astronaut.)

Many who disagreed with my views attacked me with vulgar, gendered language, depredation, and physical threats

Lori Garver

She says that, years later, she was the personal target of then-Senator Nelsons ire for advocating that private companies be given a chance to propose alternatives to NASAs traditional government-run approach.

For example, when Musk made public comments that he could help fix NASAs problems, she recounts how then-Senator Nelson, in a private meeting, shouted at me to get your boy Elon in line.

She accuses Nelson of rewriting history during his 2021 Senate confirmation hearing. Not surprisingly, the new NASA Administrator recalls his record differently, she writes. The seventy-nine-year-old is doing his best to wrap himself in the Commercial Crew flag.

The bad blood between the two Democrats also comes across in an episode Garver recounts from 2020, when she was a space policy adviser to Joe Bidens presidential campaign.

She says Nelson, then a former senator, had her disinvited from a 2020 campaign event heralding the upcoming maiden launch of SpaceXs Crew Dragon to the space station.

Garver reserves some of her harshest criticism, however, for the SLS the mega-rocket and space capsule built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin that NASA is banking on to return astronauts to the moon by 2025. She faults its lack of reusability, exorbitant anticipated price per launch, as well as the self-dealing government acquisition system that rewards existing contractors and programs.

Had SLS flown for the amount of money and in the period of time that we were told they would there would be no book, she said in an interview.

Garver, who has been publicly attacking the SLS project as wasteful for years, derides it in the book as the Senate Launch System.

She says the political pressure to keep production lines going was overwhelming even if it meant that taxpayers paid double for components in a system that might never fly more than a few times.

She recounts how the bureaucracy initiated the program out of the ashes of the Constellation effort knowing that what they were promising was not achievable.

NASA staff from the program offices, centers, legislative affairs, general counsel, and even public affairs had been working against us in secret, she writes. I thought about how many people in the room and across the country were ecstatic with the announcement, unaware that their leadership was lying to them about what was achievable. Thousands of people would spend their next decade working on systems that werent sustainable over the long term.

It was easier to keep doing the same thing while charging the government more and more money, she added. This process continues to this day.

After $40 billion spent on a space transportation system that is not reusable and by recent estimates will cost at least $4 billion per launch she faults NASA under the Biden administration for sticking with it.

The Biden administration is now the third administration to ignore such realities, she writes, so the absurdity continues.

She notes, for example, that NASA is paying Aerojet Rocketdyne to refurbish engines for the SLS that the government initially developed under the Space Shuttle program at $150 million apiece.

Since the SLS throws four away each launch, taxpayers will spend $600 million per launch for engines they paid for already, Garver writes. By contrast, SpaceX sells a Falcon Heavy launch for $90 million, reusable engines included.

If Escaping Gravity is an indictment of business as usual in Washington, it also reads at times as a love letter to billionaire space barons Musk, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin space companies.

My story is difficult to separate from Elons, Garver boasts in the book, because I wouldnt have managed to pull off much of a transformation at NASA without him and SpaceX.

Likewise, she describes her discussions with Bezos as like talking to a friend Ive known for years, calling him relaxed, inquisitive, and hilarious.

And she refers to Branson as the most naturally charismatic of the billionaire space barons.

Whether we personally like the billionaire space titans as individuals is beside the point, she writes. By all accounts, they are following established laws, and instead of investing in space companies, they could be spending all of their money on creature comforts that do little for our national economy.

She maintains she has no personal interest in championing the space billionaires. I have never worked for any of those guys, she told POLITICO. I have never taken a dime from them.

Garver leads a foundation called Earthrise, which is dedicated to using satellites to combat climate change. She has financial ties to the space industry. She is an executive at Bessemer Venture Partners, though she says she is not a shareholder in any of its companies. She also serves on the board of Hydrosat, a Luxembourg-based space imaging company, and previously was on the board of space technology company Maxar Technologies.

Im not conflicted, she maintained in an interview. Its not my thing.

The book still outlines what she sees as brighter prospects for NASAs future. Garver expresses optimism that her battles have set the stage for a new era in the space program.

Thankfully, she writes, while the dinosaurs devour the last of the leaves on the high treetops, the furry mammals have continued to evolve.

She heralds NASAs decision to select SpaceX to build the Human Landing System for the Artemis moon program and lauds congressional pressure to open up the competition to other companies in the future.

She is also hopeful that NASA will eventually be more open to SpaceXs reusable Starship that is now under development.

If successful, Starship alone could perform the entire Artemis mission without SLS, Orion, or the Lunar Gateway, at significantly reduced cost and increased capability, she writes, referring to the NASA rocket, space capsule and plans for a small orbiting space station around the moon.

The shift to a more sustainable architecture for human space exploration again feels in reach, she adds.

But the entrenched interests arent about to give up, either, Garver warns. [T]he traditional players havent retired; they are writing new plays while enjoying and fueling the fratricide, she writes in the book. In my view, we still need to keep our eye on the ball in order to assure sustainable progress. The stakeholders who brought us SLS and Orion are heavily invested in protecting them.

She told POLITICO she fears too much is still driven by, oh we really need to do it in a way that employs these friends of mine or these companies have good relationships with these members of Congress so therefore it should be funded. That shouldnt have anything to do with it.

For the military-industrial complex, she added, the aerospace people have been very successful at keeping those government contracts closely held. Theyve got every incentive to do so. The system reinforces that.

She said government bureaucrats need to get tougher to withstand the political pressure: the job is to do the very best with taxpayer dollars. It isnt to feather the nests of our friends.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misspelled Lori Garvers name in a photo caption.

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'Get your boy Elon in line': NASA tell-all recounts turmoil over private space race - POLITICO

Enlarge / A graphic representation of the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment in orbit near the Moon.

NASA

NASA and Rocket Lab are gearing up to fly a novel mission to lunar orbit that in many ways serves as the vanguard of what is to come as the space agency and US companies ramp up exploration and development of the Moon.

The space agency is financially supporting the privately built satellite, named CAPSTONE, with a $13.7 million grant. It is scheduled to launch on an Electron rocket as early as Saturday from New Zealand.Developed by a Colorado-based company named Advanced Space, the spacecraft itself is modestly sized, just a 12U cubesat with a mass of around 25 kg. It could fit comfortably inside a mini-refrigerator.

The mission's scientific aims are also modestprimarily, the demonstration of a new system of autonomous navigation around and near the Moon. This Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, or CAPS, is important because there is a lack of fixed tracking assets near the Moon, especially as the cislunar environment becomes more crowded during the coming decade.

Nevertheless, NASA views this as a pivotal interplanetary mission for a number of reasons.

In an interview, a senior engineer in NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, Chris Baker, said the space agency is interested in this kind of technology as it makes plans to help manage growing traffic near the Moon, including its own Artemis missions and commercial spacecraft delivering NASA science payloads to the Moon's surface.

The CAPSTONE mission will also benefit NASA in another way. It will fly in a special orbit,called a near-rectilinear halo orbit, around the Moon. This is a highly elliptical orbit that periodically comes to within about 3,000 km of the Moon and travels as far away as 70,000 km. In that sense, it's a weird orbit, but because it is neatly balanced between the gravityof Earth and the Moon, the orbit is highly stable and requires only a small amount of spacecraft propellant to hold position.

Later this decade, NASA intends to start assembling a small space station,called the Lunar Gateway, in this elliptical orbit. The Gateway is intended to serve several purposes, including providing a way station for astronauts traveling down to the surface of the Moon. The CAPSTONE mission will be the first spacecraft to test out the parameters of this orbit and verify the stability of the orbit as predicted in simulations.

"The mathematical models are really good," Baker said. "There's not any concern that we're going to learn anything to affect it. This is really more about refining our understanding, looking at station-keeping Delta-v to ground those models with real flight data and optimize operations."

The CAPSTONE mission is a pathfinder in other ways that could prove important as exploration of the Earth-Moon system broadens beyond traditional space agencies. It may help uncover ways to cut the costs of reaching the Moon, a significant barrier to commercial activity.

Notably, this will be the first interplanetary mission launched by a small, liquid-fueled rocket, the Electron vehicle. The launch company, Rocket Lab, has built an interplanetary third stage called Lunar Photon that will separate from the rocket about 20 minutes after liftoff. Six days later, after raising CAPSTONE's orbit to 60,000 km, the Photon stage will make a final burn and boost CAPSTONE into deep space.Enlarge / A ballistic lunar transfer viewed in an Earth-centered inertial frame, top-down and inclined views.

Advanced Space

Then the spacecraft will spend nearly four months traveling to the Moon, following what's known as a ballistic lunar transfer that uses the Sun's gravity to follow an expansive trajectory. While this path will bring the spacecraft to a distance of more than three times that between the Earth and Moon, it will require the small vehicle to burn relatively little propellant to reach its destination.

"One of the things that makes this mission particularly attractive to us is the capabilities it is demonstrating, and the US small businesses and commercial capabilities that it's leveraging," Baker said. "It's demonstrating access to the Moon for a small spacecraft on a small rocket. It's really pushing the envelope as a commercially owned spacecraft operating at the Moon and helping to blaze a trail that others can follow."

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For the first time, a small rocket will launch a private spacecraft to the Moon - Ars Technica

NASA & SPACE NEWSThis image of Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula, separated by the Galveston Bay, were taken by the crew of the International Space Station as it orbited 262 miles above. In the image, Galveston Island is at right, Bolivar Peninsula at left, with the top of the picture being southeast. (NASA image)

(NASA) The issue of General Order No. 3 by Union troops on June 19, 1865, marked the official end of slavery in Texas and the U.S.

On that Monday, enslaved African Americans in Texas learned of their freedom. That day of liberation became known as Juneteenth, when the Emancipation Proclamation was announced by Union troops in Galveston, Texas.

On Thursday, June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in this years Juneteenth Workforce Message:

Last year, President Biden signed legislation into law that established June 19 as Juneteenth National Independence Day a federal holiday. On this day, we reckon with the moral stain of slavery on our country. We reflect on centuries of racial injustice, inequality, and struggle that unfortunately still exist today.

There is still more work to do, and it is work we must all do. I encourage all members of the NASA family to participate in a Juneteenth celebration and reflect on this historic event in our history. Let us reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to building a more perfect union.

The above image of Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula, separated by the Galveston Bay, were taken by the crew of the International Space Station as it orbited 262 miles above. In the image, Galveston Island is at right, Bolivar Peninsula at left, with the top of the picture being southeast.

Premiering on Juneteenth, Sunday, June 19, The Color of Space is a 50-minute inspirational documentary by NASA that tells the stories of Black Americans determined to reach the stars.

It will be available to watch starting at noon EDT on NASA TV, the NASA app, NASA social media channels, and the agencys website.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY: International Space Station Captures Galveston and the Beginning of Juneteenth - SpaceCoastDaily.com

Parkinson's patients could be getting benefits from research conducted on the International Space Station that has connections to Louisville. Paula Grisanti, Chief Executive Officer for the National Stem Cell Foundation Headquarters in Louisville, spoke with WLKY about a groundbreaking new study.Organoids will be launched into space and will spend six weeks on the ISS before splashing back down.These organoids, which Grisanti described as "mini-brains," are composed of cells from people suffering from MS and Parkinson's Disease. After they return, the data they produce will be collected, prepared and refined for another mission in 2023. Grisanti said that sending the organoids to space allows them to communicate with each other in a zero-gravity environment. This activates them much like a spinner would on Earth but without "confusing" the organoids and preventing them from communicating at their best with each other. The hope is that the research will help scientists accelerate the discovery of Parkinson's before it onsets.

Parkinson's patients could be getting benefits from research conducted on the International Space Station that has connections to Louisville.

Paula Grisanti, Chief Executive Officer for the National Stem Cell Foundation Headquarters in Louisville, spoke with WLKY about a groundbreaking new study.

Organoids will be launched into space and will spend six weeks on the ISS before splashing back down.

These organoids, which Grisanti described as "mini-brains," are composed of cells from people suffering from MS and Parkinson's Disease.

After they return, the data they produce will be collected, prepared and refined for another mission in 2023.

Grisanti said that sending the organoids to space allows them to communicate with each other in a zero-gravity environment.

This activates them much like a spinner would on Earth but without "confusing" the organoids and preventing them from communicating at their best with each other.

The hope is that the research will help scientists accelerate the discovery of Parkinson's before it onsets.

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Research conducted in space to fight Parkinson's has Louisville connection - WLKY Louisville

Since E.E. Doc Smiths 1934 novel, Triplanetary, people have dreamed about performing the first space dive. As we make our first steps toward commercialising space travel, many people have started to wonder if we are any closer to achieving the first space dive.

When Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson were celebrated for travelling to space, some people questioned whether they had actually gone to space, or simply reached the edge of space. This opened up a debate about where space really begins.

According to the Fdration Aronautique Internationale (FAI), which regulates aeronautics, astronautics and related activities, space begins 62 miles above sea level, a line dubbed the Krmn line after Theodore von Krmn, who calculated this altitude level. The region below this line is referred to as the edge of space. Once you cross the Krmn line, you can say that you have reached space, although reaching space doesnt imply being in orbit. However, the United States Air Forces definition of space begins at just 50 miles above sea level, reflecting changes in outer space. To reach orbit, you need to be ~248 miles above sea level, which is where the International Space Station is.

To date, there have been no successful space dives. People have been able to skydive from higher and higher. In 1959, Joseph Kittinger jumped from 74,700 feet, a record which he broke in 1960 when he skydived from 102,800 feet. In 1962, Yevgeni Andreyev set a new record when he skydived from 83,523 feet a record which was only surpassed in 2012 when Felix Baumgartner made skydived on three occasions, from 71,581 feet, 96,640 feet, and 128,000 feet, respectively. The current record for the highest and longest-distance free fall jump is held by Alan Eustace, who, in 2014, jumped from 135,908 feet. However, Kittinger still holds the record for the longest-duration free fall, for his 1960 jump, which lasted 4 minutes, and 36 seconds.

Space diving is a hard problem. Technical challenges have prevented successful jumps from the mesosphere or thermosphere. Orbital Outfitters, which is not defunct, worked unsuccessfully to develop a suit that would allow space diving. Any successful suit would have to be able to deliver larger amounts of oxygen than current suits are capable of, have a carbon dioxide absorber, be able to keep everything cool, and, well, just not melt. At that height, a space diver is at risk of being boiled from their blood outwards. To date, there has been no suit developed to overcome the challenges of space diving.

Its not just about the suit, though. A space diver would need a parachute that could withstand being deployed at the kind of extraordinarily high speeds involved. At the beginning of space, we are talking about reaching velocities of nearly 4,474 miles per hour. At the level of the International Space Station, we are talking about velocities of nearly 17150 miles per hour. With the technology we have, that would kill the space diver.

Scientists have been trying to figure out these equipment problems for decades. Theyre still having to create flowcharts to develop equipment for every single dangerous phase of this audacious feat. Were close, but not very.

Just when you think it couldnt get worse, things get worse, much worse. Re-entry is possibly the single biggest challenge from a technical point of view. Quite simply, any space diver faces the possibility of being burnt alive. No suit in existence can withstand the extreme temperatures that a space diver would be facing. A space diver would have to endure temperatures of as much as 1,370C, whereas the standard spacesuit can only withstand temperatures of about a fifth of that.

Lets make things even harder: if a space diver were hurtling down from the International Space Station, they would be hurtling past satellites and space debris, all of which would be travelling at phenomenal speeds and either of which could instantly kill that space diver upon impact. Basically, it would be like asking someone to race through a firing range and hoping they dont get hit by a bullet.

A final complication is this: if you were space diving from the International Space Station, you wouldnt simply hurtle toward earth, you would orbit for as much as two years, all the while requiring food and water and oxygen, before your orbit started to decay and you fell toward earth.

Space diving is, basically, impossible. From extreme heat, to death by starvation, our intrepid space diver simply faces too many hurdles to ever make it. Perhaps ever is too strong a word. Maybe a century from now we will have resolved all the challenges and space diving will be as common as skydiving.

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On The Impossibility Of Space Diving - Science 2.0

NASA's ECOSTRESS instrument recorded ground temperatures around Las Vegas at 5:23 p.m. on June 10. In the city, the hottest surfaces were the dark-colored streets at more than 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius).Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

An instrument on the space station documented how built and natural surfaces responded to record heat in Las Vegas.

June 18, 2022 - On June 10, Las Vegas reached a record daily high temperature of 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius), and temperatures of the ground surface itself were higher still. NASAs Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) instrument recorded this image of surface temperatures at 5:23 p.m. that day.

Within the city, the hottest surfaces were the streets the grid of dark red lines in the center of the image. Pavement temperatures exceeded 122 F (50 C), while the exteriors of downtown buildings were a few degrees cooler than paved surfaces. Suburban neighborhoods averaged about 14 F (8 C) cooler than pavement, and green spaces such as golf courses were 23 F (13 C) cooler.

Cities are usually warmer than open land because of human activities and the materials used for building. Streets are often the hottest part of the built environment due to asphalt paving. Dark-colored surfaces absorb more heat from the Sun than lighter-colored ones; asphalt absorbs up to 95% of solar radiation and retains the heat for hours into the nighttime. In this image, patches of dark-colored volcanic rock south of Lake Mead are also noticeably hot.

ECOSTRESS measures the temperature of the ground, which is hotter than the air temperature during the daytime. The instrument launched to the space station in 2018. Its primary mission is to identify plants thresholds for water use and water stress, giving insight into their ability to adapt to a warming climate. However, ECOSTRESS is also useful for documenting other heat-related phenomena, like patterns of heat absorption and retention. Its high-resolution images, with a pixel size of about 225 feet (70 meters) by 125 feet (38 meters), are a powerful tool for understanding our environment.

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages the ECOSTRESS mission for the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ECOSTRESS is an Earth Venture Instrument mission; the program is managed by NASAs Earth System Science Pathfinder program at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

More information about ECOSTRESS is available here:

https://ecostress.jpl.nasa.gov/Source: NASA

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NASA's ECOSTRESS Sees Las Vegas Streets Turn Up the Heat Space Station Instruments Record Pavement Temperatures of Over 122 Degrees - Sierra Sun...

Imagine getting the chance to vacation in space:You pack your bags,launch into the heavens and find yourself floating among a sea of stars.

Now imagine having an unexpected allergic reaction. Suddenly you're hundreds of kilometres above Earth, wheezing, itching with your eyes swollen andno medication in sight.

"Are you going to wait for two months for SpaceX's next rocket to deliver you the Benadryl?" asksSaharnaz Safari.

"No, you need it now. "

That's part of the pitch made by Safari at the opening of what's being billed as Canada's first rocket factory. As part of a husband-wife team, Safari andSohrab Haghighatspoke to CBC News atthe headquarters of their company SpaceRydejust north of Toronto in Vaughan, Ont., alongside the first Canadian astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield.

Their goal: to make history as the first orbital rocket to launch from a balloon meaning lower cost and on-demand access to space. Think a private Uber-like service for cargo "from the Earth to the Moon and anywhere in between," they say.

Safari and Haghighatenvision getting cargo to the edge of space by balloon, then releasing it, lighting a rocket and using the power of miniature computers to controlwhere it goes in space.

At a price-tag of $250,000 per trip,it's a fraction of the cost ofwhat's currently on offerfor a company or entity looking to send satellites into space or get cargo to the moon, Safari says. The competition, Elon Musk's SpaceX, charges over $1.1 millionby comparison, she says.

It's an "elegant idea," says Hadfield, who says getting to space now has been accomplished through the "brute power" of burning massive quantities of fossil fuels.

"It's a physics problem," he said, speaking at Tuesday's news conference. "In order to get into orbit, you have to be going eight kilometres a second. Any slower, you fall into the air;any faster, you go out to a higher orbit."

"But there's too much friction," he said. "So you have to get above the air and then you have get going fast enough to stay up there."

That's where the balloons come in.

But the technology isn't just handy for space travellers who might have forgotten something important back on Earth, says Hadfield. It's also got the potential to make it easier to send satellites into low orbit to help send back valuable information about the health and temperature of oceans and the planet as a whole, he says.

Jason Wood, executive director of space exploration and space industry policy at the Canadian Space Agency, imagines other uses too.

"Think about how that could be helpfulin remote or northern communities here in Canada to provide sustainable food sources or another exampleis health care, in terms of remote medicine."

Wood says SpaceRyde is part of a larger shift towards more and more commercial actors providing access to space. The industry,by some estimates, is expected to grow to a trillion dollars per year by 2040, he says.

As for Safari and Haghighat, the two met in Waterloo, Ont. during graduate school.

"That's where we got to know each other and fell in love and eventually got married," he told CBC News.

The pair, married for almost 14 years, are planning their first launch in 2023.

The year after that, their sights are set on the moon.

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Meet the husband-wife duo competing with SpaceX to send cargo to the moon - CBC.ca

Space, we've been told, is the final frontier.

A vast area of emptiness, waiting to be explored and conquered.

This idea may sound captivating, but social scientist and lawyer Douglas Ligor says it's not only problematic, but wrong.

Space, or at least the part that's relatively close to Earth, is actually a very crowded, messy and increasingly dangerous place.

According to Mr Ligor, who is a member of the enterprise space initiative at the RAND Corporation think tank, this largely lawless area is in dire need ofbetter "space laws."

In a recent piece for the NATO Legal Gazette, he warned thatif humanity doesn't act, "space is in jeopardy of becoming an unusable graveyard," which could have major consequences for humans back on Earth.

In the early days of space exploration, from the late 1950s to the 1960s, the US and the USSR launched around 750 satellites into space.

This number has grown dramatically. Dozens of countries and companies have since sent about 12,500 satellites into orbit. Today, there are about 4,500 functional satellites and about 3,000 derelict satellites, with the rest burning up or far from Earth.

Humans rely on satellites all thetime: For GPS services, some TV signals and telecommunications, and weather forecasting, just to name a few uses.

"Countries and companies intend on sending tens of thousands more satellites into 'low Earth orbit' and 'geostationary orbit' [two main orbits around Earth] within the next couple of decades. So it's about to get very, very crowded," Mr Ligor tells ABC RN's Between the Lines.

Whizzing around these critically important satellites isa hugeamount of "space garbage,"everythingfrom obsolete rocket partsto a wrench and bolts discarded by an astronaut.

Mr Ligor says there's more than 36,000 pieces of space garbage that are about 10 centimetres in diameter and greater, and around one million pieces that are 1-10 centimetres in diameter.

When it comes to the smaller fragments, there may be upwards of 170 million pieces.

And given space garbage can travel up to speeds of 28,000 kilometres per hour, Mr Ligor says the larger pieces can "destroy, disrupt or disable a satellite or space station."

Satellites and space stations cancurrently manage the debris problemwith warning systems and manoeuvring, but thiscould become increasinglydifficult in the future.

Mr Ligor says countries keep creating space debris and can't agree on what to do with it.

The result? "Messy" space is getting messier each day.

Mr Ligor warns of a cascading scenario where debris leads to collisions, which creates more debris and then more collisions (and so on), resulting in a very dangerous environment for space operations.

"The situation is likely to get worse and we could potentially lose parts of low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit if we aren't careful."

What that means is, in a worst-case scenario, humans could lose some satellite capabilities, which may affect all those things like GPS, telecommunications and weather monitoring.

Mr Ligor warned in his recent NATO Legal Gazette piece that losing access to low Earth and geostationary orbitswould mean "the global community at all levels could suffer significant social and economic instability, as well as national and international turmoil and insecurity."

"To be sure, this is a worst-case scenario. However, notwithstanding the undetermined probability of such a scenario, experts agree that the potential for catastrophic consequences is very real."

But the one bit of good news is that humans on Earth are very safe from space debris.

According to material from NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, "a significant amount of debris does not survive the severe heating that occurs during reentry" andpieces that do survive "are most likely to fall into the oceans or other bodies of water or onto sparsely populated regions."

It states"no serious injury or significant property damage caused by re-entering debris has been confirmed."

Space law, made up of different international treaties, does already exist.

But Mr Ligor says these treaties"articulate general principles that are broad in scope and ambiguous" and no treaty contains a verification or enforcement mechanism.

In 1972, many nations agreed to the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects. But Mr Ligor says it's "woefully inadequate" in many situations.

He says the treaty only made countries liable for their objects when they're inside the Earth's atmosphere or if they fall back to Earth. Up in space itself, there are no rules to assign fault.

So if an errant astronaut glove hits a satellite and causes millions of dollars in damage, there's currently no way to determine who's actually at fault.

In other words, it's "the Wild West" up there.

"[Today] nations and operators can pick and choose which standards they want to apply when I think the reliance on voluntary norms and voluntary behaviours is what's gotten us into this mess," Mr Ligor says.

As a result, he's advocating for a much stronger system of governance in space.

He suggests adding new protocols to previous treaties or a new treaty "that devises a framework or system of rules that everybody can reliably count on ... [and] that's at least relatively enforceable."

Mr Ligor is also worried about how wealthy companies are buying up satellite "real estate" and what this means for countries who are less advanced in space development.

Geostationary orbit is a prime spot for broadcasting and telecommunications satellites so competition to secure a slotis set to become "very, very fierce."

"There's a very limited amount of real estate in the geostationary orbit," he says.

"Companies are essentially trying to get as many of these slots in the orbit as they can If you have money and resources, you can get the best location and you can box other operators out."

It means countries which are yet to start space programs, especially developing countries, may be totally boxed out of some parts of the space real estate market in the future.

Speculating about what lies even further ahead for space development often sounds like the realm of science fiction. But Mr Ligor says now is the time to consider what's possible and what guardrails there should be.

For example, later this year NASA is set to send a probe to an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter which is made up of iron and nickel and may be worth a whopping US$10 quintillion.

"Nobody's actually gone out and mined the moon or an asteroid yet. So we have this opportunity [now] to wargame different sets of rules," he says.

"What outcomes do we really want? And do we want them to be fair? If we do, we certainly don't want to devise rules that are just going to benefit the 'first movers' a [Elon] Musk or a [Jeff] Bezos or a particular country that gets to the moon first and starts mining water or other precious elements."

He says militaries are heavily investing in space, which should be a red flag.

In recent years, the US established a Space Force as a separate branch of its military, the French Air Force became the French Air and Space Force and NATO declared space an "operational domain."

"[Throughout history] whenever you have military build ups, that can be a dangerous thing. It's proven to be dangerous unless there are rules and political checks and balances to mitigate against that."

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Posted20h ago20 hours agoTue 21 Jun 2022 at 7:00pm, updated14h ago14 hours agoWed 22 Jun 2022 at 1:26am

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Space is crowded, messy and dangerous, says this expert, and it needs better road rules - ABC News

Osaka, Japan - Panasonic Industry Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Kadoma-shi, Osaka; Representative Director, President, CEO: Shinji Sakamoto) announced today that it will conduct space exposure experiments[2] of its electronic circuit board materials and Underfill for board level reinforcement . The materials will be launched into outer space within FY2022 (by the end of March 2023) on the Exposed Facility[1] of the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and remain there for about six months.

In recent years, the aerospace industry has accelerated the development of space technologies and solutions with an eye toward solving environmental and social issues on Earth, including endeavors such as the full-scale promotion of manned lunar surface activities and efforts to increase services that utilize low-earth-orbit satellites.Against this backdrop, these experiments will expose Panasonic's products to space to assess the impact on them and utilize the data obtained for future product development. Such products include MEGTRON series multi-layer circuit board materials and LEXCM series semiconductor device materials, which are widely used in the field of communication infrastructure. This project allows experiments in space (an environment where microgravity, high vacuum, cosmic radiation, and wide-ranging temperature changes occur simultaneously), which are difficult to duplicate on Earth.Panasonic will provide electronic materials to contribute to businesses relating to the moon and Mars, which are expected to expand in the future, and technological innovations for high-altitude platform stations (HAPSs)[3], etc., thereby aiming to realize a sustainable society.

Panasonic will participate in the Space Delivery Project -RETURN to EARTH-, which is promoted by Space BD Inc., to launch research products collected from domestic and overseas research institutions, educational facilities, and private companies into space in order to conduct space exposure experiments. The company's experimental samples will be installed on the Exposed Experiment Bracket Attached on i-SEEP (ExBAS) mounted on the IVA-replaceable Small Exposed Experiment Platform (i-SEEP) of the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo on board the International Space Station (ISS). The samples will be launched into space to allow for approximately six months of exposure experiments. Subsequently, the samples will be retrieved by the ISS and returned to Earth via a cargo spacecraft. The company is planning to evaluate changes in their material properties before and after exposure to space.

An experimental area exposed to space and located outside the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo on board the International Space Station, which is in orbit approximately 400 km above the Earth's surface. The facility enables scientific observations, Earth observations, communications, science and engineering experiments, scientific experiments, etc.

Exposure to microgravity, cosmic radiation, high vacuum, and other conditions unique to space environments. It is difficult to reproduce all of these environments simultaneously on Earth.

Abbreviation of High-Altitude Platform Station. General term for systems that provide communication services over a wide area by mounting communication base stations, such as those for LTE and 5G applications, on unmanned aircraft flying in the stratosphere about 20 km above the ground. Since HAPS is resistant to disasters and can provide communication services to 3D spatial areas including those in the sky, it is expected to help eliminate information gaps between different locations by covering a wide range of areas where communication networks are not yet in place, such as mountainous areas and remote islands.

Electronic Materials Business Division, Panasonic Industry Co., Ltd.https://industrial.panasonic.com/cuif/ww/contact-us?field_contact_group=2343

Panasonic Industry Co., Ltd. websitehttps://www.panasonic.com/global/industry/

Space BD Inc. websitehttps://space-bd.com/en/

Public Relations Department, Panasonic Industry Co., Ltd.Email: press-industry@ml.jp.panasonic.com

A global leader in developing innovative technologies and solutions for wide-ranging applications, the Panasonic Group switched to an operating company system on April 1, 2022, with Panasonic Holdings Corporation serving as a holding company that has eight companies under its umbrella.Panasonic Industry, in charge of the Panasonic Group's device business as one of the eight companies in the Group, was established on April 1, 2022 with the mission "We will open the way to a better future and continue to contribute to an affluent society through a variety of device technologies." Against the backdrop of the labor shortage in manufacturing, the explosion of data with the rise of the information-based society, and greater demands for the environment and safety for the mobility society, the company focuses on areas where continuous evolution is required and provides customer value with distinctive features of unique materials and process technologies such as capacitors, compact servomotors, EV relays, and electronic materials. For the year ended March 31, 2022, the company achieved net sales of 1,131.4 billion yen. To learn more about Panasonic Industry, please visit:https://www.panasonic.com/global/industry

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