Category Archives: Space Station

Astronauts and NASA have taken to social media to commemorate today's Juneteenth holiday from Earth and space.

Juneteenth, also known as African American Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, marks the date June 19, 1865 when tens of thousands of Africa-Americans in Texas were emancipated. While President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863 freed slaves in U.S., many of the Confederate states ignored it.

But, two years later, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, a Union Army general, issued orders to free the enslaved people in what was then the reclaimed confederate territory of Texas, which was one of the final acts of emancipation in the country.

NASA, former NASA astronauts Mae Jemison, Leland Melvin and current NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps are memorializing the day and their thoughts online.

Related:Charles Bolden, NASA's 1st Black administrator, speaks out on systemic racism

NASA shared an image of Texas from spaceof Galveston, Texas with a caption commemorating the holiday. "#Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, learned of their emancipation. In this view from space, Galveston is seen from the @Space_Station. Today we reflect on how far we've come and how much further we have to go," the agency wrote on Twitter.

More: NASA's SpaceX launch is not the cure for racial injustice on Earth

Melvin, who served as a mission specialist on two Space Shuttle missions STS-122 and STS-129, shared a beautiful tribute to the day that included not only a short history lesson but a snapshot with a number of people of color who have had a significant, lasting impact on the space sector and on the world.

Melvin wrote on Twitter: "Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when General Major Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and read a federal order abolishing the institution of chattel slavery in the state."

He also shared a photo of himself standing with people including NASA astronaut Victor Glover, who is set to become the first black astronaut to join the International Space Station Crew when he launches with SpaceX's Crew-1 mission later this year; Epps; NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson and even Nichelle Nichols, who famously played Nyota Uhura in the original "Star Trek" series.

Epps retweeted Melvin's sentiment and added "Happy Juneteenth! Its a very important day to celebrate."

Jemison also included important historical details in her tribute to the holiday. On Twitter she wrote: "#Juneteenth recognizes & celebrates Black peoples freedom and the end of slavery in the US! 19 Jun 1865 Union Army General issued orders to free enslaved people in the retaken confederate territory of Texas 2 years after Lincoln signed the #EmancipationProclamation 1 Jan 1863."

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Astronauts and NASA pay homage to Juneteenth - Space.com

FP TrendingJun 19, 2020 14:29:52 IST

Astronomers have identified a green glow in the Martian atmosphere,not unlike the glow observed by astronauts from the space station when they look towards the Earth.

According to a BBC report, the glow comes from oxygen atoms when they get excited by sunlight. While it has long been predicted to occur on other planets, the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which is a joint European-Russian satellite at Mars, is the first to make the observation outside Earth.

"Youd never plan a mission to go look for this kind of thing. Today, we have to be very clear about the science were going to do before we get to Mars," Dr Manish Patel from UK's Open University said, speaking aboutthe finding."But having got there, we thought, well, lets have a look. And it worked."

Artist's impression of the TGO at Mars. The TGO detects the excited oxygen not with an imaging camera (hence no pretty pictures) but with its Nomad spectrometer package. This instrument sees the oxygen at very particular altitudes. Image: ESA

The study's results, published in the journalNature Astronomy,add that the emissions are a consequence of collisions between atmospheric molecules and charged particles that are racing away from the Sun. On Earth, these interactions are heavily influenced by theplanet's strong magnetic field, which pulls the particles down towards the two magnetic poles.

In a statement by the European Space Agency, lead author Jean-Claude Gerard of the Universite de Liege in Belgium said, One of the brightest emissions seen on Earth stems from night glow. More specifically, from oxygen atoms emitting a particular wavelength of light that has never been seen around another planet.

The statement also points out that this emission has been predicted to exist at Mars for around 40 years.

Astronauts aboard the ISS in 2011 saw a green band of oxygen glow is visible over Earths curve. On the surface, portions of northern Africa are visible, with evening lights shining along the Nile river and its delta. Image: NASA

Jean-Claude and the team were able to spot the emission using NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery) and including the ultraviolet and visible spectrometer (UVIS).

Co-author of the study Ann Carine Vandaele, Principal Investigator of NOMAD, said that the study's authors decided to point at the edge of Mars and found emission at an altitude of around 80 kilometres, which also depended on the changing distance between Mars and the Sun.

Understanding the properties of the Mars atmosphere is key towards operating missions to the planet, USA Todayreported.

According to theESA, studying the glow of the planetary atmospheres can provide a host of information about its composition and dynamics,even revealing how energy is deposited in it by both the suns light and solar wind.

Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison.

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Green glow seen in the atmosphere of Mars, similar to Earth's from space station - Firstpost

It's been two months since astronaut and Maine native Jessica Meir returned from space and now the Caribou native is speaking out about what it was like to be a member of the first all-female spacewalk.

Meir, who was first selected by NASA in 2013, had a childhood dream of going to space.

From 2019 to 2020, she got to serve as a flight engineer on the International Space Station for Expedition 61 and 62.

Over the past year, and particularly since the beginning of her time on the ISS in 2019, Meir said she found herself in a variety of situations she didn't necessarily expect.

Those moments have included giving tips on isolation for people stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, making appearances on late night talk shows and getting serenaded by one of her favorite bands, The National.

But it was the spacewalk that made a lot of national headlines, when she and fellow astronaut, Christina Koch, donned space suits and went outside the ISS to do maintenance and keep the orbiting lab functional.

During the time she and Koch were doing that work, Meir says the priority was just that. The work.

She had a job to do and, as she points out, the class of astronauts she was part of in 2013, was also the first to have 50% men and 50% women.

By the numbers, Meir says everyone should expect to see more women on more NASA missions and notes the agency has committed to putting a woman on the Moon.

Still, she'll also tell you that just because space can be a physical and emotional vacuum when you're working in it, with inches of a protective suit between you and death, there are moments of reflection after the hatch closes.

"It was a very proud and humbling moment," she said, during an interview with NECN and NBC10 Boston on Friday.

She explained that she and Koch, "were quite overwhelmed by the level of excitement for it on the ground" and that the experience wasn't necessarily something she had expected.

The credit for the achievement, however, Meir says, actually goes to all of the previous NASA astronauts whose shoulders, Meir feels she stands on.

"That spacewalk had really nothing to do with Christina and myself," she said. "That was really for all these women that came before us."

In the present and on Earth, Meir has continued contributing to efforts for future efforts, who Meir believes will be from many diverse backgrounds, as they prepare for more private-sector supported space travel along with missions to the Moon and Mars.

In particular, Meir is looking forward to the publication of a paper she worked on about an experiment in space to find different ways to combat muscular and skeletal atrophy.

She explained that the zero-gravity environment in space takes a heavy toll on an animal's muscles and bones, which, in turn, would make a long space flight to somewhere like Mars rather difficult since a spacecraft making that journey would likely be smaller and not have room for the exercise equipment Meir had access to stay healthy on the ISS.

A third of all humans currently in space are from the state of Maine. Last week, York native Chris Cassidy joined Caribou native Jessica Meir on the International Space Station who will be preparing to head back to Earth.

"There was one experiment using a mice model that has applications not only for long-term space flight but also to many disease states on the ground, conditions where people have problems with their muscular and skeletal systems," Meir said.

"That's actually yielded some incredibly interesting results and we've recently just submitted a paper to publish those results. You'll have to stay tuned just a little bit longer," she added.

Waiting a bit longer is something Meir quickly realized she too would be doing after landing in Kazakhstan in April.

Because of COVID-19, her mother was unable to fly to Houston to see her in person as planned and Meir hasn't been able to fly to Maine either.

"I still haven't seen my mom," she said. "Outside of [her] friends in the local area, I haven't seen any of my family or friends and that's been disappointing and difficult for me to deal with but it's something that everybody is having to deal with."

Meir says keeping her family and friends healthy by not traveling to them is more important right now.

While she stays grounded, Meir is also waiting to find out if she will be selected for any of NASA's upcoming missions to the Moon or beyond.

As she pointed out, the decision is not hers, but if possible she would get on a rocket tomorrow to return to space.

"To go to the Moon, that is really my next great dream and there's a chance that could happen," she said.

In the meantime, Meir says she's going to appreciate everything she missed while she was in orbit, a list that includes the friends she can see right now, fresh fruits and vegetables, yogurt at breakfast and salads.

She is also thinking about what she will do when she eventually returns to Maine and thinking of all the people she wants to thank in person.

"New England has always played such a special part of my life, I was living and working in Boston before I got this job and spent all of my first years in Maine and spent all of my first 18 years in Maine," she said.

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Astronaut and Maine Native Jessica Meir Talks About Experience in Space - NECN

That is only about one-third of the way to the 62-mile altitude that is often considered the boundary of outer space, but it is still high enough to see that our planet is indeed round. Ms. Poynter said the price for a ride would be more expensive than the $75,000 that World View had planned to charge, probably about $125,000.

The new design is simplified. Instead of trying to steer by finding winds blowing in the desired direction, Space Perspectives balloon will lift off and head in the direction of that days winds. By letting out some of the hydrogen that makes the balloon lighter than air, the craft slowly descends to a splashdown in either the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.

The craft will have a parachute to allow a safe return if the balloon somehow deflated.

Ms. Poynter said Space Perspective has to obtain enough investment for its initial development work, including an uncrewed test flight in the first quarter of next year. If all goes according to plan, the first flights with passengers might take off around the beginning of 2025, nearly a decade after the target date the founders had set for World View.

In addition to World View, Ms. Poynter and Mr. MacCallum have attempted other ambitious space projects. They worked on the balloon and craft that lifted Alan Eustace, a Google executive, to near the top of the stratosphere for a successful record-setting parachute dive in 2014.

They also collaborated with Dennis Tito, an entrepreneur who is one of the few private citizens to visit the International Space Station, on Inspiration Mars, a private endeavor to launch two people on a flyby of the red planet. That proved out of reach because available rockets were not powerful enough.

We have done a lot of hard things in our day, Mr. MacCallum said, and some have worked out and some of them havent. And, some of them were, Wouldnt it be fantastic? Maybe low probability, but worth giving it a shot like Inspiration Mars.

Ms. Poynter said a marketing study that Space Perspective commissioned found that roughly 2 million people would be interested in their balloon trips, potentially a market worth a quarter of a trillion dollars.

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They Want to Sell Balloon Rides 19 Miles Up. Havent We Heard This Before? - The New York Times

Antietam Elementary School students talk with the International Space Station through a multipoint telebridge

Antietam Elementary School students talked with Commander Chris Cassidy through Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) in the first-ever virtual multipoint telebridge. Six students asked Cassidy questions during the short time frame that was allotted for the event.

Throughout the school year, ARISS assists with connecting schools to the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Normally, at a school site, students would gather in one room to participate. A licensed amateur radio operator would set-up equipment at the school that would connect students to the ISS at a scheduled time. However, this year, with the closure of schools, ARISS found a way to add the element of connecting students virtually from their homes. The solution was building a multipoint telebridge.

Antietam Elementary Gifted Education Teacher Kathy Lamont, who is also a member of the ARISS education and executive committee, volunteered Antietam students to take part in the first multipoint telebridge with the ISS. From their homes, each student dialed into a conference call and logged into ARISS newly created YouTube channel. From his home in Rhode Island, Steve Rys was the master control of the live YouTube feed, which included a graphic depiction tracking the location of the ISS. The channel also served as a way to share informational videos with students about ARISS and the technology used to conduct space chats with the ISS.

John Kludt, based at his home in Atlanta, Georgia, served as the program moderator. Kludt kept tabs on the ISS, shared information and introduced Fred Kemmerer, the radio operator responsible for making contact with the ISS. Kemmerer used his 40-foot antenna at his home in New Hampshire to contact Cassidy aboard the ISS. Rys shared a live video feed of the ISS as it started flying over Canada.

The students and volunteers were excited as the time drew closer to begin contact with the ISS, which would only be in range of Kemmerers radio signal for about 10 minutes.

November Alpha One Sierra Sierra this is Alpha Bravo One Oscar Charlie, any copy? Kemmerer called out. After several attempts, Kemmerer switched from his primary channel, then to his back-up channel and back to his primary channel. Five minutes had past before Kemmerer called his contact at NASA in Huntsville, Alabama. Cassidy was having technical difficulties with the radio on-board the ISS. Determined to have a successful space chat for the Antietam students, Kemmerer continued to call and finally made contact.

Miles, a second-grader, was the first to ask Cassidy a question, What does the sun look like from outer space? He can barely be heard through the teleconference connection. Kemmerer asked Miles to repeat the question and the audio was still hard to understand.

Cassidy, who had a list of the questions, volunteered to answer them. In response to Miles he said, Good question Miles. The sun is the same exact appearance that we see on Earth. Its the same size and the same intensity, although we dont have the protection of the atmosphere, so its very, very bright for us.

Cassidy continues with the next question, which is from Henry, a kindergartner, who asked, How comfortable is it to sleep in space? The astronaut explained that they float inside sleeping bags tied to a wall and once they get use to not having a pillow, its very comfortable.

Kemmerer chimes in asking Cassidy to stand-by, then asks Catherine, a kindergartener, to ask her question. Despite some static, the question can be heard by Cassidy. Two more student questions were heard and answered by Cassidy before the ISS moved out of the range of Kemmerers antenna.

Lamont was excited to provide this opportunity for students.

I love being able to connect students to real activities and real careers. Anything that gets students more aware of their surroundings and shows them that they are a part of the much larger community is key, she shared.

Check out the video to hear Antietam students making history by talking to an astronaut aboard the ISS from their homes. ARISS has also shared the full program on their YouTube channel.

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Students chat with the ISS from their homes - Brentsville District High

The Weekend Edition is pulled from the daily Stansberry Digest.

By Corey McLaughlin

Now seems like a great time to leave Earth...

A pandemic rages on. Some states are seeing their highest average of new daily cases since COVID-19 first struck the U.S. And for the past few weeks, cities across the country have surged with protests...

Police brutality is the flash point today, but we've been warning for years that mounting economic frustrations (much less virus-aided ones) would lead to more frequent and more intense civil unrest.

But we're not focusing on that today... Instead, we want to remind you about the types of triumphs that humankind can reach.

On Saturday, May 30, a pair of NASA astronauts got lucky...

Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley blasted off the planet from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on board a SpaceX rocket bound for the International Space Station 254 miles up in the sky.

It was a historic day for two big reasons...

It was the first time a private company, Elon Musk's SpaceX, launched NASA astronauts into space. And it was also the first time a crew left Earth via American soil at all since 2011.

For years, NASA astronauts have been hitching rides with Russian cosmonauts to the space station... reflecting an era of innovative stagnation, hesitation, and bureaucracy in U.S. space flight since the Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts during a reentry from space in 2003.

Enter SpaceX.

Musk, also known as the polarizing founder of Tesla (TSLA), started the company in 2002 with the crazy idea of colonizing Mars... putting a base on the moon... and having millions of people fly to both places from Earth, as if it were a flight from New York to Los Angeles.

As Musk said in a press conference after the successful launch...

This is hopefully the first step on a journey... of life becoming multiplanetary for the first time in the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth. That's seeming increasingly real with what happened today.

Hundreds of years from now, if someone looks back on today's essay in a blockchain-powered content archive, maybe they'll laugh and say, "Of course... we've been going to Mars every summer for years." Until then, though...

We're not living on Mars yet, but people seem interested...

NASA said that more than 10 million people watched the launch of the Crew Dragon Demo-2.

It was a welcome break that gave us a strange sense of normalcy amid an endless stream of chaotic images on the mainstream news.

NASA's broadcast included live feeds of the cockpit. Behnken and Hurley, a pair of former military test pilots, were mostly along for the automated ride, but they did test manual controls while docking the spacecraft with the space station on Sunday...

The events also included fresh footage of one of SpaceX's signature "reusable rockets" landing in routine fashion on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This part of the process might be something you've seen before. But it wasn't always done this way...

You see, during a "normal" NASA launch, the "first stage" of the rocket the most powerful and most expensive part would usually just break off and drop back to Earth, crash-landing somewhere in the ocean... never to be seen again.

SpaceX reinvented this standard part of rocket-launching over the past two decades... The company designed technology to guide the first-stage rocket back to Earth in a controlled descent so that it can be used again.

Just like we reuse commercial airliners or cars, reusing rockets saves time, money, and critical components. It's a phenomenal step toward Musk's dream business of flying people all over outer space on a daily basis.

Not long ago, SpaceX was best known for exploding rockets...

When the company started experimenting with Musk's idea of reusing rockets and landing them back on Earth in 2013, the early results were almost comical...

There were explosions on the ground and in the air, as well as rockets that tipped over sideways like candles falling in the wind.

But these repeated failures, followed by commitment to the plan when no one was watching, is precisely what led to SpaceX's breakthrough event with millions paying attention.

Nowadays, the "reusable rocket" idea is almost an afterthought to rocket operations. That's a testament to the routine... It has been successfully done at least 50 times.

Private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin headed by Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos provide the technology, testing, and resources to actually build the rockets and take on the liability. (If anything went wrong during the launch on May 30, you can bet SpaceX would have shouldered most of the blame, not NASA.)

In the meantime, entities like NASA train the astronauts and bring their facilities and experience to the table. It's a match made in space-heaven...

And this private-public partnership became a necessity to actually get things done...

Following the Columbia tragedy, NASA's whole identity was upended.

Operations were shut down for two years. And after that, engineers needed to get approvals on proposed items or changes from up to several boards, which essentially acted as "filters."

The bureaucracy stifled innovation. As Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut and senior adviser for SpaceX, explained during a presentation at our annual Stansberry Conference in Las Vegas last October...

What's the best way to design something if you want to get through this process quick and inexpensive? Just do the same thing you've always. That's where we ended up, with very little innovation.

We didn't really have the freedom to fail anymore, and it was largely because of the accidents we had over time. After Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, we got less and less willing to fail even in testing and development, where you need to be a bit reckless and push the boundaries in testing. Otherwise, you never do anything great.

Now, we can't discuss space any further without talking about the "Space Force"...

Forget for a moment that "Space Force" is the name of a TV sitcom on Netflix (NFLX), starring Steve Carell...

This newest branch of the U.S. military announced by President Donald Trump in December has actually been doing some interesting things in its short history. And the stakes couldn't be higher...

NASA's primary mandate from the White House is to put humans on the moon by 2024. And in the meantime, plenty of other projects are ongoing...

Even though reusable rockets and human spaceflight are what make headlines, satellites actually hold the key to the future in space. That's where companies are lining up to land government contracts...

In March, the Space Force launched its first rocket in the name of national security. The mission was to complete a "constellation" of military satellites... On May 16, the U.S. launched a robotic X-37B space plane into low-Earth orbit to complete a "secret" mission.

In the March issue of Stansberry Innovations Report, Dave Lashmet wrote about this mission. And he also outlined what the Space Force will actually do...

The Space Force will control our military and intelligence satellite launches, plus protect our assets in orbit. As such, it has two main missions...

The first is offensive. It will compete to control space as a U.S. observational post. It's almost a throwback to World War I, when the balloon corps used binoculars to see troop movements.

The Space Force's second mission is defensive. It must protect those satellites.

And it's wasting no time getting started...

One of the Space Force's big early tasks is to find the best partners to launch satellites into orbit and to construct the next generation of military technology technology that will keep us ahead of our enemies and competitors.

So there's money to be made in space on Earth...

Last month's high-profile launch was technically not a "Space Force" mission. But you could call it that by association...

Right now, four companies are competing to be the launch provider for the Space Force from 2022 to 2025... SpaceX is one of them. But if you're looking to make money with this company in the public markets, you can't right now. It's not publicly traded... at least not yet.

But you can make money with others right now...

For example, two of the other three companies in the "launch provider" battle are publicly traded. And a bunch of others could be in line for lucrative government contracts as we delve deeper into the final frontier and look down at Earth with more technology.

In the Stansberry Innovations Report, Dave and editor John Engel have identified the companies best-positioned to deliver big space-related returns. That includes one of the largest, most stable, publicly traded leaders in space technology... and a little-known American company that could have 1,000% upside.

Trillions of dollars will be made in the space industry, starting this year. Click here for all the details on these companies now.

All the best,

Corey McLaughlin

Editor's note: Dave and John see the space industry as a booming, profitable market. In their Stansberry Innovations Report, they've tracked down companies that are entering the newest "space race" and are well-positioned to earn you a profit. And recently, Dave and John shared the name of a little-known company entering the space industry... And you can take advantage of its 1,000% upside potential today. Click here to learn more.

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You Can Make Money in Space on Earth - DailyWealth

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question youd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

In the zero-gravity airplanes or vomit comet, why does stuff behave like there is no gravity when it is just falling? Austin B., 11, Scranton, Pennsylvania

I have flown many times in zero-gravity airplane flights. Each time I still enjoy the feeling of floating free, the ability to fly across the cabin from just one gentle push on the wall, just like astronauts in the International Space Station, and the novelty of rotating your body in whatever direction you choose. The feeling is like the brief sensation on some roller coasters or off of a diving board, but for close to half a minute and without the air rushing past you its fun!

People feeling weightlessness without being in spaceflight might seem like a contradiction. But it is possible, and people frequently choose to do this for recreation or for research in an airplane that is flying in the atmosphere, not out in space.

I am a researcher in aerospace engineering and am interested in how to control and use liquids and gases in spaceflight. Examples are liquid rocket propellants in spacecraft or water in life support systems in human spacecraft.

When standing still, you actually experience the force we call gravity when you feel the Earth pull us toward its center. Gravity pulls you down, and the floor pushes up on your feet. If gravity disappeared, you could push off of the floor and float away, never returning to the floor unless you found a ceiling to push off of again. You would appear to float around like someone in a vomit-comet airplane flight or an astronaut in the International Space Station.

You may have learned that the space station orbits the Earth because the force of gravity on it is balanced by the sideways force caused by the circular flight path. This force is called centrifugal force, the same that you feel when turning in a car, train, amusement park ride or similar.

Airplanes fly closer to Earths surface, so gravity is a little stronger for the airplane than the International Space Station. But clearly the force of gravity caused by the Earth exists at the space station and at the vomit-comet, yet astronauts in space station and researchers or tourists in the vomit-comet look like there is no gravity. Why?

I have flown in the vomit-comet flights with science experiments and Purdue University students, and indeed, the experience feels like there is no gravity.

Yet each time I fly, gravity pulls the airplane down to the ground for the landing on the runway. Therefore, we know gravity must be present, and yet people look like and feel like there is no gravity during part of the vomit-comet flight.

These research flights are typically full of qualified researchers who have earned an advanced degree, in my case a Ph.D.

One everyday event might help you understand how apparently gravity is both present and absent at the same time. When you ride in a car that turns to the left, you feel pushed to right. You may even feel pushed against the right-hand side of the cars interior, and the door pushes back on you. Turning in the direction the car is traveling also changes what we call the velocity of the car.

Velocity encompasses both the speed of the car and the direction that it is traveling. Changing the direction feels like sideways gravity to you. Changing the speed, such as a sudden stop, feels like forwards gravity to you. Elevators starting and stopping feel for a moment like there is more or less gravity. These changes in velocity are called accelerations. Acceleration has an amount and direction, just like velocity does, and both are examples of vectors. Another vector is force, and one example is gravity, which pulls us down to the Earths surface.

You have experienced that acceleration feels the same as gravity does. Suppose you could find a way to create an anti-gravity acceleration: that is, an acceleration acting in the right direction and in the right amount to cancel out gravity. Is this possible?

The answer is yes this is what happens in a vomit-comet flight and in an orbit.

The shape of the vomit-comet flight path is called a parabola. Pilots achieve this by flying upwards at an angle of about 45 degrees and then they level out and dive at about 45 degrees, which creates the acceleration needed to cancel out gravity. The maximum speed for the airplane and how rapidly the airplane can pull up before and after a parabola determine how long this acceleration can last, about 25 seconds.

Gravity pulls down on us, and by accelerating down in just the right way in an aircraft or spacecraft, we can feel like we are in zero gravity. The correct physical term is weightlessness, but zero gravity is a descriptive term that also describes the sensation, so even in the aerospace research world and in NASA, zero gravity is the common term used most often by experts.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question youd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit adults, let us know what youre wondering, too. We wont be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

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What is the 'zero gravity' that people experience in the vomit comet or space flight? - The Conversation US

Artist illustration of a Pulsar

Just as lighthouses have helped sailors navigate safely into harbour for centuries, future space travellers may receive similar guidance from the steady signals created by pulsars.

Scientists and engineers are using the International Space Station to develop pulsar-based navigation using these cosmic lighthouses to assist with wayfinding on trips to the Moon under NASA's Artemis programme and on future human missions to Mars, the US space agency said on Wednesday.

Pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron stars, are the extremely dense remains of stars that explode as supernovas. They emit X-ray photons in bright, narrow beams that sweep the sky like a lighthouse as the stars spin.

From a great distance, they appear to pulse, hence the name pulsars.

An X-ray telescope on the exterior of the space station, the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer or NICER, collects and timestamps the arrival of X-ray light from neutron stars across the sky.

Software embedded in NICER, called the Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology or SEXTANT, is using the beacons from pulsars to create a GPS-like system.

This concept, often referred to as XNAV, could provide autonomous navigation throughout the solar system and beyond.

"GPS uses precisely synchronised signals. Pulsations from some neutron stars are very stable, some even as stable as terrestrial atomic clocks in the long term, which makes them potentially useful in a similar way," said Luke Winternitz, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The stability of the pulses allows highly accurate predictions of their time of arrival to any reference point in the solar system.

Scientists have developed detailed models that predict precisely when a pulse would arrive at, for example, the centre of Earth.

Timing the arrival of the pulse to a detector on a spacecraft, and comparing that to when it is predicted to arrive at a reference point, provides information for navigating far beyond our planet.

"Navigation information provided by pulsars does not degrade by moving away from Earth since pulsars are distributed throughout our Milky Way galaxy," said SEXTANT team member Munther Hassouneh, navigation technologist.

"It effectively turns the G' in GPS from Global to Galactic," added team member Jason Mitchell, Director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technology Division in NASA's Space Communication and Navigation Program.

"It could work anywhere in the solar system and even carry robotic or crewed systems beyond the solar system."

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Cosmic 'Lighthouses' to Help Space Travellers Find Ways to Moon, Mars - The Weather Channel

SpaceX is looking to add an offshore rocket launch facility to the infrastructure its building in South Texas, according to company job postings seeking offshore operations engineers and offshore system technicians.

Founded by billionaire Elon Musk, SpaceX has been developing and testing prototypes of its Starship spacecraft planned to take people to the moon, Mars and beyond at a launch site just outside Brownsville.

Now, it appears that Musk wants floating launchpads, too.

SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth, Musk said on Twitter.

On HoustonChronicle.com: SpaceX connects Brownsville to a new world of space enthusiasts

Its the latest announcement in a now six-year adventure for those living in South Texas.

The company announced it would build a launch site for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets near Boca Chica Beach in 2014, but the proposed launch site sat idle for several years.

Construction was delayed by unstable ground that required trucking in 310,000 cubic yards of soil, enough to cover a football field 13 to 14 stories tall, to settle and compress the land. Anomalies during a flight to the International Space Station in 2015 and a launchpad test a year later also forced the company to put Boca Chica on the back burner.

Activity increased gradually and then suddenly. And it wasnt with the originally planned Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. SpaceX opted to build and test a 65-foot-tall prototype called the Starhopper.

In April 2019, SpaceX fired its first engine at the Texas launch site. The prototype made a tethered hop that same month. Then came two hover tests in July and August, the latter having the Starhopper lift itself to nearly 500 feet before returning safely to Earth.

Its more recent testing of Starship prototypes has seen a variety of leaks or explosions, the most recent a small rupture on Monday. But Musk keeps pushing forward with a fast-paced cadence of test, fail, fix, test again, fail again and then fix again.

This Starship vehicle is one of three selected by NASA to potentially lower astronauts to the lunar surface in 2024. And this vehicle wont be the first to partner with the agency.

On May 30, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley toward the International Space Station.

In an interview aired on NASA TV ahead of that launch, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine praised SpaceX for its willingness to learn from failures.

SpaceX can do things that NASA historically has not done, Bridenstine said. They test, they fail, they fix, they fly. They test, they fail, they fix, they fly until the point where we are today where not only is SpaceX comfortable but NASA is comfortable.

Read the rest here:
SpaceX is building a floating, superheavy-class spaceport in the Gulf of Mexico - Houston Chronicle

Here on Earth, the concept of architecture (and those who specialize in it), is pretty clear and straightforward. But in space, human beings have comparatively little experience living and working in habitats. For the past sixty years, multiple space stations have been sent to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which include the now-defunct Salyut stations, Skylab, and Mir, as well as the present-day International Space Station (ISS).

But in the near the future, we hope to build stations and commercial habitats in LEO, on the surface of the Moon, and Mars. In addition to needing a steady supply of food, water, and other necessities, measures will need to be taken to ensure the psychological well-being of their crews. In a recent article, Stellar Amenities founder and CEO (a space architect herself!) Anastasia Prosina explored how space architecture can meet these needs.

In this article, which is available on Stellar Amenities website, Prosina indicates how space architecture borrows from multiple forms of niche architecture to accomplish the task of ensuring human beings can live and work in space. These include the kinds of design elements one finds in tiny housing, small living apartments/houses, vehicle design, capsule hotels, and more.

Prosina summarized the similarities between Earth-bound and space architecture to Universe Today via email:

No matter what kind of architecture it is, it pursues the mission of enhancing the human experience This is the exact same mission [when it comes] to the small architecture of tiny houses, small apartments, Arctic, or any other remote area stations and capsule hotels.

However, as one ventures beyond the realm of principle and gets into the actual process, some very notable differences become clear. In regular architecture, the architects vision comes first, and it is then the responsibility of the engineer to realize this vision. In space architecture, the opposite is the case, where the engineers build and the architects follow.

For the engineers, this means designing and assembling the physical structure in space and incorporating all the essential systems like life support, power systems, water recycling, storage, waste disposal, food, etc. The architect follows, bringing the design elements that make a habitat in space feel worth living in. As Prosina describes the architects role:

The mission of space architecture is to break the monotony of small space habitat and ensure the design helps mitigate risks associated with isolation, said Prosina. A space architect comes afterwards to help design for the human needs in the confined environment.

Herein lies another key difference, which is the level of flexibility Earth-based architects have compared to their space counterparts. In short, the spaceflight industry does not enjoy the same level of creative freedom since their structures need to be functional more than anything. But perhaps the biggest constraint, says Prosina, arises from the fact that space architects need to launch their designs to space:

Architects on Earth are able to create almost everything that comes to their mind. In contrast, space architects have to follow the constraints of a prefabricated structure, a shell of spacecraft. Moreover, the current cost of launching something to space is about $2,700 per kg. Space architects should be creative in choosing the right materials and structures that are lightweight, [durable], and dont emit gasses on the confined environment.

This is not to say that the cost of sending payloads and people into space hasnt improved drastically in recent years. In 2000, NASA estimated that the cost of sending payloads to LEO was over $22,000 per kg ($10,000 per lbs). Naturally, this was something they hoped to reduce by two orders of magnitude in the next four decades to $1,000 per kg (~$450 per lbs) by 2025, and $100 per kg (~$45 per lbs) by 2040.

At present, SpaceX is able to send payloads to LEO for $1,410 per kg ($640 per lbs) using their Falcon Heavy rocket, a further improvement on what the Falcon 9 can do $2,719 per kg ($1,233 per lbs). Nevertheless, sending habitats to space is still a multi-multi-million dollar venture that requires multiple heavy launch systems. On top of that, the components of a space habitat need to be designed to be launched into space prior to assembly.

As Prosina explained, this raises another important constraint, which is the issue of transportation:

A habitat should perfectly fit into a transportation system and make the most efficient use of it in terms of volume, mass and multifunctionality. It decreases the price of going far away which allows to do more things per funding unit, thus fostering exploration

In recent years, the prospect of building habitats in space has moved beyond the realm of scientific proposals and science fiction to become a real possibility. Much of this is the result of the commercial space industry (aka. NewSpace), which has led the way in reducing the associated costs of individual launches and the move towards commercializing LEO.

In addition to allowing greater access to space (for companies, universities, research institutes, and individuals), the NewSpace industry has also focused attention on how going to space can be adventurous and even luxurious. This is where ideas like space tourism, space hotels, and commercial space stations in LEO and on other celestial bodies come into play.

In the coming years, Richard Branson (founder and CEO of Virgin Galactic) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon and Blue Origin founder and CEO) hope to offer flights to suborbit with their spaceplanes and rockets (respectively). Other companies, like SpaceX and Space Adventures, are looking to go even farther, offering flights to the Moon and even Mars.

In all of these cases, the challenges go far beyond engineering concerns. In NewSpace, says Prosina, companies need to offer more than just safety and access to space. They also need to offer a variety of experiences, leisure, and comfort to make the services appealing. This way, and only this way, will they be able to stay competitive against rival companies.

As Prosina indicated, this has also had an effect on the job description of the space architect:

Traditionally, space architect was equal to a systems engineer. Currently, here is a transition happening, and now if you want to work as a space architect at NASA, you should combine both disciplines, aerospace and architecture. Private sector is picking up faster. For example, Blue Origin and SpaceX are recognizing that design is as important as safety because design supports wellbeing which is critical in long missions.

In the coming years, Prosina anticipates that space architecture will become a fast-growing industry, and its professionals will be in high demand. In the next decade, a number of scientific and technological advances are expected that will enable architects to come up with increasingly sophisticated solutions to the challenges of living in space.

Since space habitats are extremely tiny, we, space architects, make sure that people inside of it dont feel confined, stressed, Prosina added. The users have a pretty close up view to their habitats so it is essential to pay attention to using color psychology and tactile experience to make the space feel bigger and diversify the experiences in a small environment.

Similar to what Marschitect Vera Mulyani (aka. Vera Mars), the founder and CEO of Mars City Design, and other space enthusiasts are proposing, the overall aim here is to find ways in which human beings can thrive in space, not just survive. This is essential if people are going to live beyond Earth in the near future, and its also necessary to make the prospect appealing. Said Prosina:

Vera and I are colleagues pursuing the common vision since this is how architecture is serving humanity. Architecture helps us thrive on Earth so we should apply it in other places wherever humanity goes! As for today, a total of 566 people from 41 countries have gone into space. Of those, only around 7 have been an orbit tourist whereas 56 thousand people can afford to do so. However, it takes more than wealth to go to space and to buy a ticket, it takes people to really want to go to space.

The way we make going to space affordable, concludes Prosina, is to get people to want to go to space. So not only do we need to reduce the associated costs and be creative with our interior designs, we also need an accompanying shift in perspective. However, its fair to say at this point that space tourism, commercializing space, and the idea of space being the new frontier are already popular.

One thing is clear, though. Humanity has the potential to build a very bright future that involves living in space. The benefits and opportunities, properly realized, are limitless and extend back to Earth.

Further Reading: Stellar Amenities

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What Does it Mean to Be a Space Architect? - Universe Today