Category Archives: Space Travel

A renewed era of space exploration is upon us, and many exciting missions will be headed to space in the coming years. These include crewed missions to the Moon and the creation of permanent bases there. Beyond the Earth-Moon system, there are multiple proposals for crewed missions to Mars and beyond. This presents significant challenges since a one-way transit to Mars can take six to nine months. Even with new propulsion technologies like nuclear rockets, it could still take more than three months to get to Mars.

In addition to the physical and mental stresses imposed on the astronauts by the duration and long-term exposure to microgravity and radiation, there are also the logistical challenges these types of missions will impose (i.e., massive spacecraft, lots of supplies, and significant expense). Looking for alternatives, the European Space Agency (ESA) is investigating hibernation technology that would allow their astronauts to sleep for much of the voyage and arrive at Mars ready to explore.

This researcher was the subject of a recent study led by Alexander Choukr, a professor of Medicine at the Hospital of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU), and Thu Jennifer Ngo-Anh a payload coordinator with the ESAs Directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration Programs. The paper that describes their findings was recently published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

As they indicated in their study, the main challenges when planning for a mission to Mars involve optimizing the overall mass of the spacecraft and maintaining the crews physical and mental health. In terms of supplies alone, this means bringing enough food, water, and other necessities (like medicine) to last at least two years. As Ngo-Anh said in a recent ESA press release:

We are talking about 30 kg [66 lbs] per astronaut per day, and on top of that we need to consider radiation as well as mental and physiological challenges. Where there is life, there is stress. The strategy would minimize boredom, loneliness, and aggression levels linked to the confinement in a spacecraft.

This strategy involves inducing a state of torpor in the astronauts, similar to what mammals experience during hibernation. This consists of reducing the metabolic rate of an organism until they enter a period of suspended animation, which allows them to preserve energy. In the context of spaceflight, reducing the metabolic rate of a crew en route to Mars by 25% would dramatically reduce the necessary supplies and the size of the habitat involved.

The practice of putting people into a state of suspended animation has been carried out in hospitals since the 1980s. By inducing hypothermia in patients reducing their heart rate and metabolism, doctors can perform complex and time-consuming surgeries with a greater chance of success. However, this process is not an active energy reduction method and doesnt include most of the advantages of torpor.

In nature, animals hibernate to survive through winter when temperatures drop for months and food and water become scarce. During this time, they will reduce their heart rate, breathing, and other vital functions to a fraction of their normal rate, and their body temperature will drop close to that of their surroundings (aka. ambient temperature).

While many species rely on hibernation to survive long periods of scarcity (like tardigrades, frogs, and various species of reptiles), bears are perhaps the best known. They also appear to be the best role model for human hibernation in space since they have a comparable body mass to humans, reduce their body temperature by only a few degrees, and acquire extra body fat before entering this state.

But as medical research has shown, humans also lose more muscle mass and bone density and are at greater risk of heart failure than their ursine kin. As Prof. Choukr explained:

However, research shows that bears exit their den healthily in spring with only marginal loss of muscle mass. It only takes them about 20 days to be back to normal. This teaches us that hibernation prevents disuse atrophy of muscle and bone, and protects against tissue damage.

The crucial factor appears to be lower testosterone levels in humans since estrogens strongly regulate energy metabolism. The very specific and different balance of hormones in females or males and their role in regulating metabolism suggest that women could be preferred candidates, Prof. Choukr added.

To accommodate deep-space hibernation technology, engineers could build soft-shell pods with fine-tuned settings aboard future generations of spacecraft. This would consist of a quiet environment with low lighting, high levels of humidity, and low temperatures of less than ten degrees Celsius (50 F). The astronauts would wear clothing to prevent overheating and wearable sensors to measure their posture, temperature, and heart rate.

Water containers would surround every capsule to provide radiation protection as the astronauts remain in a state of torpor. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence will maintain the ship and wake the crew if an anomaly or emergency. As Alexander explained:

Hibernation will actually help protect people from the harmful effects of radiation during deep space travel. Away from Earths magnetic field, damage caused by high-energy particles can result in cell death, radiation sickness or cancer. Besides monitoring power consumption and autonomous operations, the computers onboard will maintain optimal performance of the spacecraft until the crew could be woken up.

These efforts mirror similar studies conducted by NASA, which entered into a partnership with Atlanta-based aerospace company SpaceWorks to investigate the long-term potential of hibernation technology. The initial 24-month study concluded in 2016, with NASA announcing its intent to keep supporting the companys research. These and other studies on hibernation for deep-space missions could also lead to new applications for patient care on Earth.

As the 21st century unfolds, we could see interplanetary missions that resemble the well-established sci-fi trope crews awaking from their cryo chambers to deal with mission-related problems. Here at home, induced torpor could become a common medical procedure for people with a terminal illness or severe injuries, giving doctors the time they need to come up with treatments.

The applications might even extend to interstellar travel! Given the distances involved and the limits of our propulsion technology, a crewed interstellar mission could take centuries or millennia to reach even the nearest stars! Assuming future generations want to undertake these voyages and dont have some fancy new propulsion system (or a huge budget), hibernation technology may be the way theyll get it done!

Further Reading: ESA, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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Could Astronauts Hibernate on Long Space Voyages? - Universe Today

Four sophomores at Wellsville High School won a competition, and their experiment is one of just 25 chosen to go to outer space.

WELLSVILLE, N.Y. Four Wellsville High School sophomores are working on something out of this world.

They were voted one of the top teams in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. They got top honors in the Western New York region then went on to the national competition. Their science experiment was one of just 25 projects chosen to take flight to the International Space Station!

The group is studying microgravity's effect on the resistance of Staphylococcus epidermidis to amoxicillin.

"It may sound complicated, but it's essentially just us testing the relationship between bacteria and an antibiotic when the factor of microgravity is introduced," said student Serena Boussa.

Thirty-five projects were submitted for initial review in the Western New York region. Eighteen were chosen to be judged by professionals and educators. Alfred University, Moog, and Corning Incorporated were partners. That group of 18 was then narrowed down to three the Wellsville sophomores, a group of Wellsville seniors, and a student group from Lockport.

Those three regional teams' projects were then submitted for a step two review by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. The sophomore group came out on top.

Their project is one of 25 from 23 different communities across the nation that's taking flight. There were even some international submissions.

The Wellsville students came up with the topic on their own, did all of the research, met all of their deadlines, and learned a lot in the process. They hope their work and findings will someday be used to keep astronauts and others safe, especially as interest in commercial space travel grows.

"We've done some other research on prior bacteria experiments that have gone on in space and in microgravity. We're hoping there's no grave change to the bacteria," said student Aidan Jadwin. "We're trying to figure out how it could get stronger or if it stays the same strength when affected by microgravity."

There's no grade attached to their research. They've worked on their project during study hall, after school, and on weekends.

"You just see the drive and determination of these four students to want to do this, to want to win this competition. It's just incredible," said Ross Munson, a teacher at Wellsville and teacher facilitator for the space project in Western New York.

The students are learning about much more than just bacteria and microgravity.

"I think it's giving me a taste of what working with a team is like. I know I was not good with working with a team before. I hope I am a little better now. [I've also learned to find] accurate results and going to the right places to get research," said student Eli Brophy.

"It's been really eye opening because it's helped me realize that I have a big interest in science," said student Ben Jordan.

The team will head to Washington, D.C. this summer to give a speech at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and they hope to be in Florida when their project is launched into space.

Their project will be on board the ISS for four to six weeks. Then it's back to Earth and back to work for these students who will analyze the results over summer break.

This isn't the first time a team from Wellsville has been chosen to send their project to outer space. The program started in 2018, and that year a project was chosen for flight.

See more here:

Wellsville student science project headed to the International Space Station - WGRZ.com

Once humanity stepped foot on the lunar surface, the space objective became to establish a permanent human presence in space.

The first proper space station, Salyut 1, was built by the Soviet Union in 1971. During the remainder of the Salyut program other stations were launched over the next 15 years.

In 1986, the Soviet Union launched Mir, which, unlike previous stations, was modular, allowing additions to be made over time. This station laid the foundation for what would become the most impressive construction project in human history.

Starting in 1998, the Soviet Union and the United States embarked on a joint project to build a huge laboratory in low orbit of our planet. With the union of the first two modules, Zarya and Unity, the International Space Station was born.

Its creation has allowed humans to be in space for more than 20 years and has provided a base of operations for experimentation in microgravity and the study of the impact of space flight on the human body. Lets go with 13 curious facts about the ISS:

1 Travel at full speed through space: The ISS isnt the fastest man-made thing, that honor goes to the Parker Solar Probe, which travels around the sun and Venus at 430,000 miles per hour. However, the International Space Station orbits at incredible speed.

The station orbits the Earth at about 17,500 miles per hour. At that speed, the astronauts on board circle the Earth every 90 minutes, experiencing a sunrise and sunset 16 times in each 24-hour period. Thats about 23 times the speed of sound.

NASA says goodbye to 2020 with the best images of Earth taken this year from the ISS

2nd The people on the space station experience time more slowly: Relativity tells us that the faster we move, the slower we experience time. In the normal course of our lives we do not travel at speeds that change our subjective experience of time.

But the International Space Station is very fast, as we said before (although it does not travel at the speed of light). For this reason, an astronaut who lives a year on the space station will experience one hundredth of a second less than those of us on the surface of the Earth.

Its not much, but it does mean that the inhabitants of the station, compared to the rest of us, travel very slowly in time into the future.

3 It was built by five space agencies and 15 countries in total: Space exploration often seems like a competition between various nations, but the International Space Station challenges that idea.

Space is, by definition, a place that has no borders and represents an opportunity for the global community to act in concert, rather than in opposition. When the station was built, the United States and Russia were the only associated countries, but that has changed.

Currently, the International Space Station has been built and manned by: NASA, Roscosmos of Russia, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), which It is made up of 11 countries.

NASA announces that it will crash the International Space Station in the Pacific Ocean, and we already know when

4 The legal situation of the station is complicated: The governing law on the ISS is the International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) which was signed in January 1998.

Since the station is jointly owned and operated by various government entities, the legal aspects on board the ship are a bit messy and weird.

The agreement establishes the ownership and jurisdiction of the various components of the station. More simply, member countries can extend their legal jurisdiction to the parts of the station (modules or equipment) they have provided, as well as to the crew members they send.

5 The station has welcomed more than 250 astronauts: The space station usually has a crew of seven people on board the ISS. There are times, especially during crew changes, when there can be up to 13 crew temporarily on board, but those times are very short.

Since the station has been continuously inhabited for more than two decades, many people have come and gone. Until this February 2022, the total number of people who have been at the station amounts to 251 from 19 countries.

6 The ISS has a robot crew: The ISS would not be a proper spaceship if it did not also have a robot crew. Scientists at NASAs Johnson Space Center (JSC) created Robonaut 2 as the stations first synthetic crew member.

Commonly called R2 (hello, Star Wars), the Robonaut has lived aboard the ISS since 2012. R2 has vision systems, sensors, and hands nearly identical to humans in dexterity. The robot is capable of performing repetitive or dangerous tasks on behalf of the crew.

However, Robonaut 2 is primarily used on the station as a test bed for future robotic activities on long-duration space missions.

What is the International Space Station like inside? Discover it in 360 with this ESA video

7 The station is approximately the size of a football field: The International Space Station is the largest spacecraft ever built by a fairly wide margin. If we put it on the ground, the ISS would stretch across an entire football field from side to side.

The station has bedrooms, bathrooms and a gym, which astronauts use for two hours a day to prevent bone and muscle loss. Its best feature, however, is the dome that allows astronauts to gaze at Earth through the window.

8 It allowed an astronaut to live in space for almost two years: One of the main objectives of the International Space Station is to understand the impact of long stays in space on the human body, since this knowledge is key to knowing what space travel would be like.

However, when it comes to American astronauts, no one has spent more time in space than Peggy Whitson. Throughout her career, she spent 665 days, 22 hours and 22 minutes off planet, just a couple of months short of two years.

9 It took 10 years and dozens of missions to complete: President Reagan approved the creation of the space station in January 1984 with the goal of launching it within 10 years. Although that deadline was not finally met, the station was built.

The first segment, the Zarya control module, was launched in November 1998 by Roscosmos and was received into orbit by NASAs Unity module just two weeks later. Over the next decade other modules and supply drops were completed before it was completed.

In all, more than 30 missions were needed to deliver modules, complete repairs, and replenish the station with supplies. Construction of the station was completed in 2009, at which point it became fully operational, just in time for the tenth anniversary of its occupation.

10 Astronauts have to drink recycled urine: When youre in space, you have to take everything youre going to need. That means astronauts need frequent deliveries of food and water, along with scientific instruments, experiments and other necessities.

Dropping supplies to the station is expensive, sometimes costing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars per kilogram of mass. Thats why NASA and other space agencies go to great lengths to limit the weight of payloads. Hence they filter and drink their own urine.

Russia has just destroyed an old satellite: the International Space Station in danger

11 The ISS cannot see you, but you can see it: Astronauts aboard the station can see many things through the dome, including world wonders like the Great Wall of China. However, seeing people is somewhat far from them.

Lucky for us, and as long as the sun isnt out, seeing the International Space Station in the sky is relatively easy. The stations exterior, especially its solar panels, reflects a significant portion of sunlight as it orbits the sky.

The station is so bright, in fact, that its the third most visible thing in the night sky, after the moon and Venus. In addition, the orbital path of the station makes it fly over 90% of the Earths population centers.

12th It is under constant threat from thousands of pieces of space debris: Over the more than two decades the station has been operating, there have been some 30 instances where it has been in danger of being hit by space debris, according to Space, and the danger of impact is increasing.

As of 2021, there were 23,000 pieces of space debris tracked by the US Department of Defense, each measuring approximately 10 cm or larger. And those are just the pieces we know about.

13 The ISS will remain operational until at least 2030, and it could have a neighbor: On January 31, 2022, NASA confirmed that the activities of the ISS have lasted until 2030. After that, the future of the station is not very defined.

Roscosmos has stated its desire to withdraw from the station, due to aging technology, which has already outgrown its initial mission design. That could happen as early as 2025.

But, even if the Russian space agency leaves the ISS, it will not completely withdraw from the space station game. Plans for a new station known as the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS) are underway.

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Did you know that there is a robot astronaut on the International Space Station? 13 curious and little known facts about the ISS - Then24.com

OWING to the potentially lethal nature of space and weight restrictions on lunar vessels, trips to the moon are usually all business.

The Apollo 14 mission made an exception for one astronauts dream to drive a golf ball into the endless expanse of outer space.

3

NASA astronaut Alan Shepard teed off from the pie in the sky on February 6, 1971.

The rigidity of his suit prevented him from putting everything he had into the iconic shots as the balls traveled less than 50 yards, which is hardly enough to find the green at an Earth-based pitch and putt.

Shepard passed away in 1998 at the age of 74 but the memory of his otherworldly drive has stayed preserved in NASA lore.

The moonwalkers are an exceptionally exclusive club.

Just 12 people have set foot on the surface of the moon.

Only four remain alive in February 2022.

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, turned 92 on January 20, 2022, and celebrated the milestone with a message to his 1.5million Twitter followers.

12 more astronauts have visited the moon but from the comparative safety of the lunar module.

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NASAs Artemis II mission is the next planned trip that will put humans near the moonbut not on it.

The four-person crew will travel to space in the Space Launch System, a rocket propulsion system that will have the crew traveling at speeds topping 24,500mph.

The rocket will disassemble after breaching the Earths exosphere and the crew will approach and circle the moon in a capsule called Orion.

According to their website, NASAs lunar exploration program packet indicates the Artemis II crew will experience an Apollo 8 moment in which they witness the full globe of the Earth from afar, as a backdrop to the Moon.

The Artemis III mission, theoretically taking place in 2025, is the final installment of the Artemis program and is teed up to be mans first moonwalk since 1972.

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NASA has declared that one of Artemis III's spacewalking crew will take a giant leap for womankind as the first female to set foot on the moon.

Privatized space travel has skyrocketed in feasibility and media attention since Jeff Bezos Blue Origin and Elon Musks SpaceX started pursuing the world beyond our world.

But private space travel has been dominated by untrained citizens like William Shatner and Michael Strahan, who tagged along on 11-minute autonomous space rides.

Future missions to the moon will require far more involvement from astronauts as Apollo 17, the last mission to the moon, had the crew inhabiting space for 17 days.

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Who hit a golf ball on the moon?... - The US Sun

Last year, an article in the journal "Cell Biology"revealed that sharks use Earth's geomagnetic field to navigate the ocean and can even get confused if they are in areas with stronger magnetic fields than the ones they were accustomed to. Intriguingly, even a species that has been perfected over millions of years of evolution can be tripped up by the ways that magnetism and magnetic fields defy expectations.

In that sense, Elon Musk's satellites never stood a chance.

Forty Starlink satellites owned by SpaceX the billionaire's aerospace manufacturing, space travel and communications company are going to be lost due to a geomagnetic storm caused by the interference between solar wind and Earth's atmosphere, according to a SpaceX press release. Forty-nine of those satellites had been launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Thursday into their intended orbit and were "significantly impacted" by the geomagnetic storm that occurred on Friday. The end result is that up to 40 of those satellites are either going to reenter Earth's atmosphere, or have already done so.

RELATED:In Earth's galactic backyard, a never-before-seen space anomaly blinks on and off

As Tamitha Skov, a research scientist of Aerospace Corp., told CNBC on Wednesday, the sun "shoots off magnets" in the form of a storm and gets dumped by the Earth's magnetic shield into the planet's upper atmosphere, where it gets heated up. Because the atmosphere then inflates and becomes denser, this poses a drag on satellites in low orbit such as those launched by Musk's SpaceX. The incident raises questions because theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which measures geomagnetic storms, had warned that one was "likely" for Friday evening one day before the SpaceX launch.

Musk's company is estimated to lose roughly $50 million on the failed venture.

"To lose most of the batch is unheard of," astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told CNBC."This is huge compared to anything that's happened before."

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While the development can be partially attributed to bad luck, Musk's company also made some mistakes.

"The lead time for geomagnetic solar storms that affected the satellites is usually 36-48 hours," Emmy Award-winning meteorologist Nick Stewart tweeted as part of a larger thread responding to the incident. "With that said, the event that caused the disruption occurred after launch but in a stretch of active solar weather."

SpaceX's satellite program is widely loathed byastronomers.The numerous Starlink satellites already in orbit form a "megaconstellation" which makes it more difficult for scientists to use their telescopic equipment for distant observations. In addition to cluttering up their view, the satellites also reflect sunlight, which causes further optical problems. As Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb told Salon in 2019, "I am concerned [that] the SpaceX satellite launch marks the beginning of a new era" in which ground-based observational astronomy is permanently hampered.

China has accused the United States of defying international treaties because of two alleged "close encounters" between Starlink satellites and the Chinese space station. The head of the European Space Agency,Josef Aschbacher, accused Musk in December of "making the rules" in space and urged the European Union to engage in a coordinated campaign in which they make sure that SpaceX's actions do not prevent countries in that organization from launching their own satellites.

This story was updated at 6:38PM ET to add more detail about the mechanics of geomagnetic storms.

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40 SpaceX satellites that astronomers loathe were destroyed by a geomagnetic storm - Salon

Moonfall, which is out in theatres now, tells the story of the moon crashing into Earth. The season's first blockbuster stars Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and John Bradley who plays KC Houseman, a conspiracy theorist who finds out about the moon before anyone else. PopCulture.com recently spoke to Bradley who detailed the "energy" he brings to the character and how his desires to travel to space depend on one sole condition.

"I did as much research on space as I possibly could have," Bradley told PopCulture exclusively. "It's such an enormous subject and you're never going to learn enough about it to match KC in terms of his own knowledge. So what I tried to work on most was that energy. And it seems to be appearing more and more lately. This energy of I won't listen to what anybody else has to say about this. I know I'm right. I'm not going to listen to anything that I don't like. And if you don't believe me, you're just going to have to, because I'm not going to jump off this horse."

Bradley continued: "I'm going to stick with it till the very end. And a lot of that's damaging and a lot of that's there's rights and wrongs to that, but it was that energy that I wanted to invest something in. That total conviction that bullish thing where he's not going to be stopped. And he's determined to get this idea through to people. And I research figures like that, these very opinionated, very passionate people, and hopefully some of that fed into KC."

KC goes to space with Brian Harper (Wilson) and Jocinda Fowler (Berry) despite not having any experience. After filming Moonfall and being in a version of a space shuttle, Bradley said he would be willing to be in a space mission but under one condition. "I remember before we started shooting, we had astronauts on set and we did some zooms with astronauts and one of the first thing I said to the guy, I said, 'If you are not trained for this and you went up into space like KC, he's not trained, but he finds himself in space. How long would it be before you found it absolutely terrifying?' And he said 'It would be instant. As soon as you get in the rocket, as if you're not used to it, as soon as that engine kicks into life, you're going to be scared,'" Bradley said. "So I would do it. I'm just waiting for it to get a little bit safer because I'm too much of a... I'm too scared at the moment, but it's bound to get better one day, right? Then I'll do it. I promise."

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'Moonfall' Star John Bradley Reveals He Will Travel to Space on One Condition (Exclusive) - PopCulture.com

Ready for the spotlight

This year will mark the Stratford Festivals 70th season, as well as the pandemic-delayed grand opening of its Tom Patterson Theatre, which will kick off with Richard III; theatre lovers will also be able to book backstage tours of the new, 77,000-square-foot landmark on select dates. At the festivals other venues, the 2022 playbill will include Hamlet, Chicago, a new adaptation of Little Women, and world premieres of Hamlet-911 and 1939. Tickets go on sale online March 6 (members) and March 18 (general public), and if you prefer watching in a smaller, more distanced audience, select shows will be at reduced capacity.

Opening soon

Calgarys Glenbow Museum is closed for a major building reno until 2024, but next month will see the opening of a temporary satellite site: Glenbow at the Edison, which will turn an empty suite in an office tower into a gallery space and new downtown destination. The locations first exhibition will be Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment, a showcase of more than 200 works by women artists in early 20th century, organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Museum admission will be free for all throughout 2022.

Into the wild

Opening this spring in remote Bamfield, B.C., on the traditional territory of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations, Outer Shores Lodge isnt your average ecolodge. The five-acre oceanfront retreat is co-owned and operated by marine ecologists Scott Wallace and Russell Markel, who both led research programs on this site back when it was an outpost of the U.S.-based School for Field Studies. The property will also be the Vancouver Island home base for sister venture Outer Shores Expeditions, which means you can book an all-inclusive stay that comes complete with a small-group tour of the wild coast from aboard a classic wooden schooner.

Setting sail

The Ritz-Carlton is getting into luxury yachting, with plans to launch its debut voyages aboard custom-built cruisers this year. Small enough to access tucked-away ports that megaships cant go, each vessel will feature 149 suites, every one offering a private terrace for ocean views. Beginning in May, the inaugural itineraries will cover Mediterranean routes like Lisbon to Barcelona (with some island hopping in the Balearics), and Marseille to Rome (with stops in glamorous Monte Carlo, Cannes and Portofino).

Sign up at thestar.com/newsletters to get our weekly Travel Headlines newsletter in your inbox. The federal government recommends Canadians avoid non-essential travel. This article is meant to inspire plans for future travel.

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Travel news: Stratford Festivals 70th season, Calgarys latest museum space and the Ritz-Carlton is getting into luxury yachting - Toronto Star

Dubai's Museum of the Future will embody the forward-thinking spirit of the UAE's founding fathers, said a senior Emirati minister on Thursday.

An eagerly-awaited attraction years in the making will swing open its doors to the public on February 22.

Mohammed Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs, said in Dubai that it would be much more than a museum serving as a "research lab" for the future.

It aims to bring together leading researchers and futurists from all over the world to offer insights into the innovations and technologies to drive development for years to come.

Mr Al Gergawi said the "Museum of the Future represents the thinking of the founding fathers of the UAE", because the UAE has always been future forward.

He said that the idea behind the museum is to "institutionalise future planning".

The museum will feature a dedicated space for children, helping to harness their love of learning.

The attraction has long been lauded as an architectural marvel and has already won global acclaim.

Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, Mohammed Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs, and Khalfan Belhoul, chief executive of Dubai Future Foundation, outline plans for the Museum of the Future. Photo: Supplied

It was named one of the 14 most beautiful museums on the planet in a list compiled by National Geographic magazine in July.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, hailed it as the "most beautiful building on Earth" when revealing the launch date on Twitter.

Mr Al Gergawi said it has "an ageless design ... it will remain modern but the Arabic calligraphy on the building represents our history, our heritage and our culture, which will remain in our future".

Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, said the stunning facility will take visitors on a journey to the future.

"This will be an iconic building ... bringing together human architecture with machine building,' he said.

"The journey in the museum will be simple, you first go to the future, then come back to the present."

Khalfan Belhoul, chief executive of Dubai Future Foundation, said the museum will celebrate humanity and its achievements.

"We are institutionalising future foresight," he said.

"The journey in the museum will begin with a trip to a distant future, going into space, then a trip to the more immediate future.

"The museum will stress the role of humanity, the importance of human interaction.

"The fourth floor of the museum will be dedicated to the environment and sustainability."

The Museum of the Future aims to attract one million visitors annually.

The building. which is 78 metres tall, is comprised of seven floors, three of which will be dedicated to space travel, one for children and one for sustainability.

It will include a meeting space to cater for 1,000 people.

The museum was constructed from 1,024 pieces, a fitting number since 1,024 bytes make up a kilobyte, and 1024 kilobytes equal one megabyte.

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, offered a fascinating glimpse inside the Museum of the Future.

Sheikh Hamdan posted footage to his Twitter account of visitors admiring the array of hi-tech facilities housed in the stunning structure before its grand opening.

The video promises that the museum will open a window into an exciting future, featuring enterprising space travel and a chance to explore the mega cities of the future.

Guests are shown enjoying an immersive multimedia experience, brought to life using cutting-edge technology.

Each floor will resemble a futuristic film set allowing visitors to explore and interact.

The museum combines elements of exhibition, immersive theatre and a themed attraction to create scenes to show what is possible in the future.

Product, media, exhibition and experience designers have crafted the content.

Three floors of the museum will focus on possible scenarios for outer space resource development, ecosystems and bioengineering, health, wellness and spirituality.

Another floor will display near-future technology that addresses challenges in areas such as health, water, food, transport and energy.

There is also a dedicated childrens floor, where they can explore and solve challenges on their way to becoming future heroes.

Updated: February 11th 2022, 5:17 AM

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Dubai's Museum of the Future will celebrate UAE's pioneering spirit - The National

Last week we highlighted the new galleries, museums and theatres opening across Australia or in development during 2022. While the trend was more a geographic one for Australia, with projects largely sited in NSW, we take a look at how that perhaps fits within a global landscape.

What is clear, is that while the pandemic may have closed doors, buildings often rolled along with incentives propping up the building industry. This has meant that come the time when we are eager to embrace our cultural dose again it has expanded in volumes.

Further with international borders soon to open again, here are some of the major new museums joining the international cultural landscape in 2022, that might share your future itinerary.

Opened: 16 January

In 2021, a total of $24.9 billion was spent on NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. While it is still surprising that the trend warrants a museum, it seems a no-brainer for tech town, Seattle. Last month it opened a 3,000-square-foot space housing about 30 displays, each between 43 to 85 inches. The Seattle NFT Museum was founded by entrepreneurs Jennifer Wong and Peter Hamilton. The museum is located in the Seattle suburb, Belltown.

Read: Future of NFTs depends on who, not what

Opened: 2 February

Finlands first cultural and event venue dedicated to dance, Dance House Helsinki, opened its doors on 2 February 2022 at Cable Factory in Ruoholahti, Helsinki. More than 5,400 square metres are dedicated to dance, with 935 seats and the largest dance stage in the Nordic countries. It will also be known as Tanssin Talo.

Cost: AUD$128.2 million(68m)Opening: March

Reopening in March is Glasgows Burrell Collection, after being closed for the past five years. Architects John McAslan + Partners have led a major refurbishment of the 1970s building which houses an eclectic collection amassed by the late shipping magnate and arts patron William Burrell, and creating 35% more gallery space and adding a new entrance and learning centre. The revamped building is also more environmentally sustainable following demands of the day.

Opening: 22 February

Pragues former Zenger Electricity Substation has become a major new not-for-profit, and non-governmental institution. Established by the The Pudil Family Foundation, the Kunsthalle will offer a dynamic programme of short-term exhibitions aiming to connect modern and contemporary Czech and international art, and innovative educational activities. Designed by Czech architecture studio Schindler Seko, the space will span 5,700 square metres and include three large gallery spaces, a design shop, a bistro, and a caf with a terrace that features views of Petn Hill and Prague Castle.

After more than six exciting and challenging years of planning, reconstruction and programme development, we are thrilled to finally open the doors of Kunsthalle Praha to the public, said Ivana Goossen, Director of Kunsthalle Praha.

The inaugural exhibition titled Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art, will be on view through 20 June 2022

Cost: AUD$34.2 million (21.5m)Opening: 14 July

This renovation has been seven years in the making, and has added a brand-new reception building designed by Bernard Desmoulin to the 15th-century house of the abbots of Cluny what is considered Frances National Museum of the Middle Ages, and is home to the famous Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, which travelled to the Art Gallery of NSW in 2018.

The Gothic chapel and Gallo-Roman thermal baths have also been extensively renovated, and the site has been finally made accessible to disabled visitors. The final phase of the works will overhaul the museums displays which date back to the 1950s. Key objects from the collection include stained-glass panels from the Sainte-Chapelle and 13th-century statues of the kings of Judah that were torn from the faade of Notre-Dame cathedral during the French Revolution and only recovered in 1977.

Cost: AUD$147 million ($US105m)Opening: April

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will reopen its La Jolla flagship gallery in April following a renovation and expansion overseen by SelldorfArchitects, who were engaged in 2017, with ground breaking and works commencing in 2016. The gallery first opened in 1941. Today it is a major museum on the edge of the ocean a stunning place to visit.

Cost: US$670mOpening: Opening 11 June

With a prime fjordside location in the centre of Oslo, when it opens in June, Nasjonalmuseet (National Museum) will be the largest museum in the Nordic region. It brings together the collections of three major Norwegian institutions under one roof the National Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design. The building has cost a massive NoK6.1bn ($670m) to realise German architects Kleihues + Schuwerk design. Its footprint spans more than half a million square feet the size we usually give to a major airport terminal or double the size of New Yorks Met Museum and it has been entirely state-funded. It will clearly be a destination, housing iconic artworks such as Edvard Munchs The Scream (1893) and Harald Sohlbergs Winter Night in the Mountains (1914), which has been voted Norways national painting.

A standout feature of the new build will be The Light Hall, an illuminated 2,400 square metre rooftop space for temporary exhibitions. The Nasjonalmuseet is part of the FutureBuilt programme that aims to develop carbon-neutral urban areas in Norway. According to a project statement, the museum has high environmental ambitions and is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% while a heat pump utilising sea water will be used for cooling. The entire faade is covered in Norwegian slate.

Opening: 18 June

The Plateforme 10 arts district in the Swiss city of Lausanne will be completed on 18 June with the opening of a new building housing the relocated Muse de llyse, a leading photography museum, and a museum of design and contemporary applied arts called Mudac. It is part of a precinct reclaimed from old railway buildings, with the first building, Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, that opened in late 2019.

Cost: cost $450mOpening: July

After the last November reveal of Hong Kongs M+ museum, this year we will see the Palace Museum, open within the West Kowloon Cultural District. The museum was announced by the Hong Kong government in December 2016, sparking controversy over the lack of prior public consultation. Designed by the Hong Kong-based architect Rocco Yim, the building will have nine galleries spanning 7,800 square metres, as well as a 400-seat theatre, educational spaces and nursery rooms, and will display around 800 artefacts and imperial treasures on loan from the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Read: International shows and art fairs in 2022

Opening: 8 October

In September 2019, Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) broke ground on its permanent home at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a new gallery designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis Studio. The new state-of-the-art 53,000 square foot building at Costa Mesa, California is double the size of the museums former location in Newport Beach.

Large sets of public stairs and a roof terrace are central features that connect OCMA to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, which includes 25,000 square feet dedicated to galleries, a sculptural wing hovering over the lobby atrium, a 10,000 square foot education center that can be configured as a black-box theater. The building has a distinctive faade of undulating bands of terracotta panels that wrap the exterior and continue inside. Admission will be free for the next ten years, sponsored by Lugano Diamonds. Its inaugural shows will be the California Biennial 2022.

Cost: more than $1bnOpening November

This one has been on the list for a while but is promised to be delivered in November. The foundation stone for the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) was laid 20 years ago by late president Hosni Mubarak. Designed by the Dublin-based architects Heneghan Peng, it is believed to have cost around $1bn, but hey who is counting? Again at around 500,000 square metres rivalling Norway, with much of the funding coming from Japanese government loans. The Museum will house over 100,000 Egyptian artefacts, displayed in chronological sequence. It is located just outside Cairo, and within a short distance from the pyramids at Giza. GEM is expected to welcome more than 15,000 visitors per day.

Opening: late 2022

The Fotografiska chain of photography museums in Stockholm, New York and Tallinn is expanding to Berlin and Shanghai in the second half of 2022. Fotografiska Berlin renovates the Kunsthaus Tacheles, a former department store and Nazi party office that was saved from demolition in the 1990s by artist squatters. Fotografiska Shanghai takes over a former warehouse in the riverfront district of Suzhou Creek. Another new space is scheduled to open in Miami in 2023.

Founded by the Indian businessman and collector Abhishek Poddar, the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) will open in Bengaluru (also called Bangalore, and the capital of Indias southern Karnataka state), at the end of 2022. Its collection includes more than 18,000 works spanning paintings, photography, textiles, graphic art and sculptures from the tenth century to the present. It has been designed by leading Indian architect, Soumitro Ghosh.

Opening: 22 February

The new Museum of the Future is being described as surreal / symbollic. The faade, conceived by the local architecture studio Killa Design, is covered in poetry phrases written by Dubais ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and the building is circular representing humanity; while its void represents the unknown future. The goal of this museum is to promote technological development and innovation, especially in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

The website explains: Each floor is like a film set from a future that you can inhabit, explore and interact with Topics featured include the future of space travel and living, climate change and ecology, health, wellness and spirituality. It is located in the Financial District of Dubai, and was founded by the Dubai Future Foundation.

Opening: late 2022

Seouls newest museum will be dedicated to all things robotics. Similar to Dubais Museum of the Future it has a futuristic sphere-like structure, designed by Turkey-based Melike Altnk Architects (MAA). It is also claimed to have been partially built by robots. They have been 3D-printing concrete and assembling the metal plates that cover its faade these past two years.

RAIM is going to be one of the buildings in the center of the renovation area the Changbai New Economic Center which is going to be a Cultural Center for Chang-dong in the northern part of Seoul and is going to be linked to the Photographic Art Museum (PAM) which is going to build next to Robot & AI Museum (RAIM)

Opening: American summer 2022

In Summer 2022 the first permanent museum dedicated to Broadway will open at 145 West 45th Street in the heart of Times Square. The Museum of Broadway is an interactive and experiential museum that celebrates Broadways rich history, the behind-the-scenes and its game changers.

Link:

Ready to travel: new international museums for 2022 - ArtsHub

As the world of aerospace continues to expand to include private companies that are now able to send people into orbit, space tech can help life on Earth. The advancement of space and medical technology is something orthopedic surgeon, oncologist, chemical engineer, and astronaut, Robert Satcher knows about first hand.

A lot of the imaging technology we use on cancer patients: MRI, CT Scans owe part of that technology to what was developed at NASA, Satcher said during a conversation with PBS NewsHours Nicole Ellis. From modern day aircrafts, to cell phones, and video chatting services like Zoom and Skype that have become surrogates for human connection during a global pandemic, solutions initially sought to make interplanetary travel and communication possible are now integral parts of everyday life, Satcher said.

Watch the interview with Robert Satcher in the live player above.

The aerospace industry has become more commercially accessible in the years since Satchers NASA Mission to space in 2009. Non-astronauts can now visit space on privately owned and operated space ships through companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. Its a good time to be a human being because, you know, these things are starting to open up and everybody is going to be able, or more people at least are going to be able to see what its like to be in space, Satcher said.

Despite companies like SpaceX setting its sights on building human settlements on Mars, our journey towards becoming a multi-planet species is in its infancy. Scientists are still figuring out how to make the 3-year journey survivable. However, one of the more significant developments in commercial space exploration is affordability by creating reusable spacecrafts.

Another crucial part of development over the years has been the diversifying of the aerospace field, while still slow, Satcher said that having people of different trades, genders, ethnicities and backgrounds will be an essential part of making our galaxy more accessible to humans. No particular group has a monopoly on either perspective or capability. So you got to get all of these different perspectives and everything to to really maximize what you get in terms of development and research and technical advancement, he said.

See more here:

One former NASA astronauts view on what is next in space exploration - PBS NewsHour