SpaceX plans to launch another big batch of its Starlink internet satellites on Thursday (Sept. 3), and you can watch the action live.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped with 60 Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to lift off Thursday at 8:46 a.m. EDT (1246 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There's an 80% chance of good weather on launch day, according to the U.S. Space Force's 45th weather squadron.

You can watch the launch live here and on the Space.com homepage, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company. SpaceX's webcasts typically begin about 15 minutes before liftoff. The company also usually offers a separate livestream with mission control audio.

SpaceX has already launched about 600 satellites for Starlink, its burgeoning broadband constellation in low Earth orbit. And many more missions are in the offing; Elon Musk's company has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites and has applied for approval to launch another 30,000 on top of that.

Related: SpaceX's Starlink satellite megaconstellation launches in photos

The spaceflight action on Thursday will be multilayered, as SpaceX will aim to land the first stage of the two-stage Falcon 9 on a "drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean about 9 minutes after liftoff.

The company has also deployed one of its two net-equipped boats to recover the rocket's payload fairing, the two-piece protective nose cone that surrounds satellites during launch. It's unclear whether the net boat will aim to pluck a fairing half out of the sky or fish the equipment out of the sea.

SpaceX routinely lands and reflies Falcon 9 first stages, and the company has recently begun reusing payload fairings as well. Such reuse greatly reduces launch costs and turnaround times, Musk has said, and therefore has the potential to revolutionize spaceflight.

The Starlink launch was originally supposed to lead off a Falcon 9 doubleheader on Sunday (Aug. 30), with the second act being the evening liftoff of the SAOCOM-1B Earth-observation satellite. Bad weather scuttled Sunday morning's Starlink attempt, but the skies cleared enough for SAOCOM-1B to get off the ground nine hours later.

SpaceX then aimed to launch the Starlink satellites on Tuesday (Sept. 1) but pushed the mission back two more days to perform additional reviews.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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SpaceX will launch 60 new Starlink satellites Thursday. Here's how to watch live. - Space.com

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft Unity fires its rocket engine and heads to space on Feb. 22, 2019.

Virgin Galactic

A Cowen survey found that more than a third of high net worth individuals would be interested in paying fora Virgin Galactic flight, giving a sense of the demand for the company's space tourism service once it begins flying customers next year.

"Cowen's proprietary survey highlights a high level of interest among high-net-worth individuals to fly to space at a ticket price of $250k or above," analyst Oliver Chen said in a note to investors on Monday.

The firm estimated that Virgin Galactic's suborbital flights have a total addressable market of about 2.4 million people, among individuals with a net worth of more than $5 million. Of those individuals, Cowen's survey found that about 39% are interested in paying at least $250,000 for a ticket.

Virgin Galactic co-founder Sir Richard Branson, CEO George Whitesides and Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya pose together outside of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ahead of Virgin Galactic (SPCE) trading in New York, U.S., October 28, 2019.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Cowen noted that "Virgin Galactic will face supply constraints to serve all interested individuals, given the limited capacity to fly passengers." The company currently has one spacecraft flying and has announced plans to build as many as five more in the coming years, with two currently under construction. Each spacecraft can carry up to six passengers on a flight to the edge of space, in addition to the two pilots that fly it. Cowen estimated that, if Virgin Galactic builds 11 spacecraft by 2030, the company could "potentially fly ~3,400 passengers per year," with flights nearly every day.

"[Virgin Galactic] is uniquely positioned to benefit from the growing consumer interest toward luxury experiences, especially among high-net-worth individuals. We believe a substantial growth opportunity lies ahead with the commercial spaceflight business, which already has ~600 reservations," Chen said.

Shares of Virgin Galactic rose about 3% in trading from its previous close of $17.46.

Cowen began research coverage of Virgin Galactic on Monday, giving the stock an "outperform" rating and a $22 price target meaning the firm expects shares will rise 26% in the coming year. Virgin Galactic has two more test spaceflights it plans to conduct before flying founder Sir Richard Branson in the first quarter of 2021, which will market the opening of the company's commercial service.

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There's big demand among the high net worth for Virgin Galactic spaceflights, Cowen survey shows - CNBC

Last month, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas issued an amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, calling for the Space Force to use the same system and rank structure as is used in the Navy. This threw a monkey wrench in the nascent military branchs plans to formally announce its rank structure. Most likely, it was to be that of the Air Force, whose officer and enlisted ranks it already uses.

Then, in an op-ed published last week that engaged the broader public, William Shatner likewise called for Space Force naval ranks. There was no Colonel Kirk wrote the actor who portrayed the celebrated captain of the Enterprise. He added: not even in the mirror universe (which is what 2020 feels like at times). The piece is written with Shatnerian pizazz, and his argument rests on our shared cultural understanding of space exploration.

As I have written previously here at ClearanceJobs, the Space Force is a blank slate, and more than when the Air Force was stood up as a branch separate from the Army, every decision made now has lasting consequences for what a Space Force means as an entity. When it comes to far reaching service branches, the Space Force matters a lot. By forcing discussion of its rank structure, Crenshaw and Shatner seem to take a hundred-year view to a present-day problem.

(To learn how you can be a part of the Space Force, check out the Clearance Jobs roundup of jobs now, or soon to be, available.)

The U.S. Air Force was born of the Army Air Forces, which was essentially its own service branch within the Army. It had a distinct culture and ethos. The National Security Act of 1947 simply formalized something that was already fact. Officers like Henry Hap Arnold spent years thinking about American air power represented as its own service branch. Moreover, the urgency of organizing air power in World War II gave the AAF de facto autonomy within the War Department.

Two atomic bombs ended any argument over what an independent Air Forces job would be beyond supporting ground forces, and it took no time for the U.S. Air Force to come into its own.

The Space Force was born of Air Force Space Command for no apparent reason except the president wanted it. He wasnt the first to call for such a thing, of course: Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama proposed an independent space-branch of the armed forces, and when Donald Rumsfeld became defense secretary in 2000 , it was not because of the terrorist threat that manifested on 9/11. Rather, Rumsfeld had chaired a prominent commission that studied the ballistic missile threat to the United States.

Among the Rumsfeld Commissions key findings was that the U.S. military needed a space equivalent to its land-sea-air approach. Decades earlier, the commander of Air Force Systems Command gave a speech seeking to reframe the Space Race with the Soviet Union, essentially asserting that rather than a civilian endeavor, the DoD should lead the effort, both with robotic and crewed spacecraft.

Discussions are one thing, but turning notion into reality is another, and the Space Forcewhich is an inevitabilitywasnt quite ready to come out of the oven. Nobody is sure, exactly, why there is a Space Force. It has no unique service culture. (Individual MOSes in the Army have cultures more distinct than the entire Space Force branch has from the Air Force). It had no atomic bomb equivalent that punctuated the need for autonomy within the DoD and defined its mission going forward. It is doing exactly the same thing it was doing in 2018 as Air Force Space Command.

All the stuff that was supposed to come first didnt. So the decisions made now are the ones that will echo for decades and possibly centuries, which is what makes the Space Force so interesting. And there is one fundamental question that the Space Force needs to answer: is it going to put people up there?

Which is why ranks matter. In the military, culture is everything. If the Space Force chooses naval ranks for its servicemembers, it makes human spaceflightwhich, already, seems like an inevitability for the servicethat much more likely, and that much sooner. What would they do up there? Nobody knows! Historically, the DoD has planned everything from moon nuke bases to orbital spy stations, but computers have obviated the need for either.

Understandably, there is great trepidation at the notion of militarizing space. Space is already militarized in the most consequential way. Those intercontinental ballistic missiles, which rely on sub-orbital space flight, can wipe out all of humankind. The problem is that the U.S. government is not serious about civilian space exploration. Though its highly visible successes suggest some massive slice of the pie, NASA claims a mere one-half of one percent of the federal budget (about $22 billion total). Imagine what it could do with Air Force money (about $194 billion)?

Well, youll have to keep on imagining because its never going to happen. When Neil Armstrong pressed bootprints into the lunar surfacethe greatest triumph in human historyNASA was working with a meager 2.3% of the federal budget.

Meanwhile, as the Space Force matures, does anyone believe it will maintain a fixed budget of $15 billion? If in its first two years the Space Force commands over 60% of the NASA budget, what does the far horizon look like?

Civilian space exploration will benefit immeasurably from a robust, well-funded Space Force. The NASA administrator should pray every morning that Space Force gets a $100 billion dollarsbecause, again, that money is never going to NASA. Space Force research and development will lighten NASAs R&D burden, just as the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s enabled NASAs Faster-Better-Cheaper program in the 1990s. If the Space Force, with a human spaceflight mindset, wants to spend big dollars on human-rated transports and landers, thats great! Let them develop the hardwarethe expensive part of space exploration.

DoD dollars funding R&D with NASA Mars applications might actually succeed in putting astronauts on the ground. (As the joke goes, we have always been 20 years from going to Mars.) And, look, the Space Force will be a part of such a high profile mission, which is not really an issue. The majority of astronauts are already members of the military. Exactly one civilian has walked on the moon, so its not like this is unprecedented. The Space Force can put one of its astronauts on the lander that carries the first Americans to Mars, the same way the Air Force would, without anyone blinking.

Is this the way we want to do things? Nope! We want to turn NASA into Starfleet. But is this the way the real world works? It sure is! On November 1, 2020, humanity will have known not a single day in twenty years without humans in space. But its long past time to up our numbers, and though circling the Earth for two decades is a great achievementthe greatest since Apolloits time to get those humans exploring the final frontier again.

DoD dollars with a Navy mindset will make that happen. Naval ranks are the easiest way to give the Space Force a culture it woefully lacks. Captains need vessels, after all, and admirals need fleets. God willing, the story of humankind is only beginning. Eventually, we might find a way to become multi-planetary. The Space Force with a Captain Kirk, rather than a Colonel Kirk, is our best chance to do it now.

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Why the Space Force Must Use Navy Ranks - ClearanceJobs - ClearanceJobs

Jeff Bezos started his rocket company, Blue Origin, back in 2000. And hes been selling Amazon stock to pump billions of dollars into the effort ever since. Like SpaceX, theyre prioritizing reusable rockets and spacecraft that can drastically reduce the cost associated with spaceflight.

Much of Blue Origins effort has gone into developing a pair of rockets: New Shepard and New Glenn.

New Shepard can carry six people inside a suborbital capsule some 60 miles (100 km) into space. Blue Origin has already flown a dozen test flights, and theyre still planning several additional tests before launching passengers. However, in March, Axios reported that Blue Origin could send passengers into space in 2020, though COVID-19 has caused delays across the space industry. If the company can still get its space capsule tested in 2020, it could be on course for paid flights in 2021.

Meanwhile, Blue Origin has announced that it will soon start selling tickets. The companys website doesnt list the price of a Blue Origin trip, but Bezos has previously said their space tourists can expect to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly in its New Shepard capsule.

The company is also working hard on their New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift, reusable launch vehicle that Blue Origin has already invested more than $2.5 billion into developing. Its larger than SpaceXs Falcon Heavy rocket, but smaller than the rocket planned with Starship. That size could eventually enable regular passenger trips into orbit and even beyond. The company will need that capacity, too. Blue Origins goal is to one day have millions of people living and working in space.

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Six ways to buy a ticket to space in 2021 - Astronomy Magazine

Sept. 2, 2020 The National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA have awarded $3.2 million over three years to development of open-source solar atmosphere and inner heliosphere software models useful to predict space weather, a project led by The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, with a UAH professor as principal investigator.

We will develop an innovative, publicly available software that would make it possible to perform space weather simulations starting from the suns photosphere and extending to Earth orbit, says Dr. Nikolai Pogorelov, a distinguished professor in UAHs Department of Space Science and the UAH Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR).

It is one of seven projects awarded. The project team includes UAH, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (co-principal investigator Brian Van Straalen), Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC; co-principal investigator Charles N. Arge), Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC; co-principal investigator Ghee Fry), and two private companies, Predictive Science Inc. (co-principal investigator Jon Linker) and Space Systems Research Corp. (co-principal investigator Lisa Upton).

The fastest NASA and NSF supercomputers will be employed. Dr. Pogorelov is one 49 awardees nationwide to get NSF-approved 2020-2021 supercomputing time on Frontera, the fastest NSF supercomputer. Time on Frontera is awarded based on a projects need for very large-scale computing and the ability to efficiently use a supercomputer on the scale of Frontera.

This project is aimed to develop a new data-driven, time-dependent model of the solar corona and inner heliosphere to predict the solar winds properties at Earths orbit, he says.

This software will have a modular structure, which will make it possible for its users to modify the individual components when new observational data sets become available from emerging space missions and our knowledge of the physical processes governing solar wind acceleration and propagation improves.

In addition to the inner heliosphere model, the team will develop a new solar surface transport and potential field models to describe the solar atmosphere. That work will be done at Predictive Science Inc. and Space Systems Research Corp.

All our codes will be easily extensible for further development, Dr. Pogorelov says. We expect that our software will serve the heliospheric and space weather research communities for many years.

Space weather prediction

The effort focuses on the physical and computational aspects of software development but the team will use MSFCs expertise to develop operational codes and add some features designed to simplify space weather community efforts to create new operational tools to improve space weather predictions.

The development of successful numerical models and their application to space weather modeling strongly depends on the observational data used to run the codes, says Dr. Pogorelov. The expertise of GSFC and MSFC in data assimilation and analysis, and operational software design, will be of major importance for this project.

Dr. Pogorelov is the leading developer of the Multi-Scale Fluid-Kinetic Simulation Suite (MS-FLUKSS), which will be used as a basis of the new software. He will coordinate software development and ensure a proper level of synergy. He will also promote the inclusion of the codes in students class projects.

Together with Dr. Pogorelov and a to-be-hired postdoctoral researcher, CSPAR researchers and co-investigators Dr. Tae Kim and Dr. Mehmet Yalim will supervise simulations in the inner heliosphere and perform quantitative evaluation of the simulation results.

Accurate space weather forecasting is important to a high-tech Earth, Dr. Pogorelov says.

The solar wind emerging from the sun is the main driving mechanism of solar events, which may lead to geomagnetic storms that are the primary causes of space weather disturbances that affect the magnetic environment of Earth and may have hazardous effects on space-borne and ground-based technological systems, as well as human health, he says. For this reason, accurate modeling of the solar wind is a necessary part of space weather forecasting.

Structuring of the solar wind into fast and slow streams is the source of recurrent geomagnetic activity, Dr. Pogorelov says. The largest geomagnetic storms are caused by solar coronal disturbances called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that propagate through and interact with the solar wind.

The connection of the interplanetary magnetic field to CME-related shocks and impulsive solar flares determines where solar energetic particles propagate, he says. Data-driven modeling of stream interactions in the background solar wind and CMEs propagating through it are necessary parts of space weather forecasting.

Currently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center forecasts the state of the ambient solar wind and the arrival time of CMEs using an empirically-driven solar wind model.

The new models will provide more accurate solutions and will all be scalable on massively parallel systems, including Graphics Processor Units, he says.

In addition to improving space weather predictions at Earth, our developed models and software will be data driven. They will be based on the observational data and shed light onto physical processes occurring on the sun and in interplanetary space.

The research efforts will include conferences and training programs targeted to increase diversity and inclusion of under-represented groups, both inside the participating institutions and in the entire heliophysics community. Two users meetings will be organized at UAH, with up to 40 participants across the country.

The developed software will be promoted in classes and also through the US-Germany-South Africa Space Weather Summer Camp and NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) activity at UAH. Its advances will also be shared with the Alabama plasma physics community through the NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) led by Dr. Gary Zank, chair of UAHs Department of Space Science and CSPAR director.

The project led by Dr. Pogorelov is the culmination of more than a decade of extraordinarily wide-ranging research activities that CSPAR and the Department of Space Science researchers have been engaged in, ranging from the physics of the large-scale heliosphere to particle acceleration models for solar energetic particles, heating of the solar corona and detailed solar wind models, Dr. Zank says.

Dr. Pogorelovs project combines all these elements and takes the research to a new level of predictive capability, Dr. Zank says. This is a remarkably exciting decade for heliophysics research and its very exciting that CSPAR and UAH are very much at the center of it.

For the announcement and image, visit https://www.uah.edu/news/items/uah-leads-3-2-million-solar-software-model-effort-to-aid-in-space-weather-predictions

Source: Jim Steele, The University of Alabama in Huntsville

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UAH Leads $3.2M Solar Software Model Effort to Aid in Space Weather Predictions - HPCwire

In a lockdown summer of downbeat aviation news, it is perhaps fitting that a highlight was a model aeroplane in a windtunnel. In turbulent times for aerospace, that aircraft is even named after a storm. But in showing some detail of the external shape of the Tempest future fighter, BAE Systems has also emphasised the UKs determination to ride out the technological, financial and geopolitical hurricanes which are set to shape the national defence challenges of the next few decades.

Those late August images from BAEs Warton, Lancashire test facility reveal an external profile designed for stealth at Mach 2, to carry a wide range of payloads and to cope with the internal heat from enough onboard electric power to anticipate exotic technologies like laser directed-energy weapons.

Whatever capabilities Tempest may ultimately bring to the Royal Air Force (RAF) with its planned service entry in 2035, BAE stresses that operational advantage and freedom of action is not about a platform but, rather, a connected system of systems across the air domain but also including the land, sea, cyber and space, domains.

In short, the RAF and its allies can no longer say the sky is the limit; projecting power or defending home territory increasingly means sustaining operations in orbit.

But while deciding to bring space into the operational domain is one thing and in that the UK mirrors the USA and France, as well as NATO actually creating an effective force is another matter. Spelling out Britains response to this air and space power challenge in a milestone July 2019 address, then-UK secretary of state for defence Penny Mordaunt announced the transformation of the nations Joint Forces Command into a Strategic Command overseeing all five domains. And, she said, the UK would be the first US ally to join its Operation Olympic Defender, an initiative dating to 2013 to coordinate allies efforts to protect key satellites.

Mordaunt also unveiled a 30 million ($40 million) investment to launch a small satellite constellation within a year. Small satellites packing huge performance thanks to modern electronics but cheaper to launch or replace than traditional big-beast units will, she said: Eventually see live high resolution video beamed directly into the cockpit of our aircraft, providing pilots with unprecedented levels of battle awareness.

That live video from space concept stems from a demonstrator satellite called Carbonite-2, launched from India in 2018 and built by Airbus subsidiary Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL). The RAF contributed 4.5 million to that mission, and the concept morphed into an RAF-led project called Artemis, with SSTL, Airbus, Raytheon, the US government and launch provider Virgin Orbit as partners.

More than two years since the Carbonite-2 launch and a year-plus since Mordaunts spacepower speech, there is still no sign of that constellation. Much depends on Virgin Orbit, which is to bring its Boeing 747-based air launch system to Newquay airport in Cornwall for commercial and rapid-response RAF launches for example, to quickly replace orbiting assets lost to malicious interference or accidents.

The California-based Virgin Group subsidiary failed in its maiden attempt over the Pacific earlier this year and may soon make a second try but there is no prospect of a flight from the UK soon. In any case, there is as yet no Artemis hardware to fly.

The RAF tells FlightGlobal: Current work as part of the Artemis operational capability demonstrator includes studies into the use of responsive horizontal launch. SSTL adds that Artemis contracts were signed just before lockdown and work continues.

Whatever the timetable, what is not in question is the UKs determination to be an independent player in space and that militarisation of space is inevitable. As the RAF puts it: We take the protection of our space capability very seriously and have measures in place to protect our military assets. And, while the UK Space Agency provides a lead on space critical national infrastructure, the Ministry of Defence provides the necessary support to protect [that infrastructure] as required.

A more comprehensive view of the challenge comes from Will Whitehorn, the former head of Virgin Galactic and now president of the trade association UKspace. As Whitehorn observes, from navigation, television and communications to every bank transaction and someday perhaps to more ambitious services like carbon-free in-orbit power generation a modern society like the UK cannot function without space-based equipment. And inevitably, he notes: When you industrialise in space were going to have to defend those assets.

Or, as Paul Day Raytheon UKs representative to the UK and European space agencies and a 25-year RAF veteran puts it, there is no longer a distinction between the military and commercial sides of space. The UK, he says, should own and operate assets where sovereignty is an issue while creating a stable commercial sector, all with a focus on security and resilience.

So as the UK moves into space as an operational domain, says Day, the country should invest in several independent capabilities. One is to monitor space weather the solar storms, for example, that can interfere with electronics and another is the ground- and space-based radar and telescopes needed to track what is in orbit. Cyber hardening of the assets and communication links is also key and, he says, the UK should invest in communication and computation to rapidly put space-acquired data to operational use.

All of those functions, he adds, are vulnerable to interference either by deliberate act or the simple fact that low-Earth orbit is increasingly crowded: You have to protect the assets.

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Why the sky is no limit for RAF's space ambitions - Flightglobal

ALISO VIEJO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN), a leading provider of ultra-low power high performance AI technology, today announced that VORAGO Technologies has signed the Akida Early Access Program Agreement. The collaboration is intended to support a Phase I NASA program for a neuromorphic processor that meets spaceflight requirements. The BrainChip Early Access Program is available to a select group of customers that require early access to the Akida device, evaluation boards and dedicated support. The EAP agreement includes payments that are intended to offset the Companys expenses to support partner needs.

The Akida neuromorphic processor is uniquely suited for spaceflight and aerospace applications. The device is a complete neural processor and does not require an external CPU, memory or Deep Learning Accelerator (DLA). Reducing component count, size and power consumption are paramount concerns in spaceflight and aerospace applications. The level of integration and ultra-low power performance of Akida supports these critical criteria. Additionally, Akida provides incremental learning. With incremental learning, new classifiers can be added to the network without retraining the entire network. The benefit in spaceflight and aerospace applications is significant as real-time local incremental learning allows continuous operation when new discoveries or circumstances occur.

VORAGO Technologies is a privately held, high technology company based in Austin, Texas with over 15 years of experience in providing radiation-hardened and extreme-temperature solutions for the Hi-reliability marketplace, and recognized as one of Inc 5000s Fastest Growing Private Companies in America. VORAGOs patented HARDSIL technology uses cost-effective high-volume manufacturing to harden any commercially designed semiconductor component for extreme environment operation, and has created a number of solutions throughout Aerospace, Defense and Industrial applications. VORAGO Technologies opens up a new world of possibilities for customer designs, no matter how hostile the environment. http://www.voragotech.com

Louis DiNardo, BrainChip CEO commented, We are both excited and proud to participate in this Phase I program with VORAGO Technologies and support NASAs desire to leverage neuromorphic computing in spaceflight applications. The combination of benefits from the Akida neuromorphic processor and a radiation-hardened process brings significant new capabilities to spaceflight and aerospace applications.

Bernd Lienhard, VORAGO CEO added, We are thrilled and honored to partner with BrainChip to harness the radiation hardening capabilities of our patented HARDSIL technology for the Phase I program with NASA. Our ongoing mission of creating components with increased availability and unmatched solutions in aerospace and defense applications paired with the Akida neuromorphic processor will create unprecedented standards moving forward in the industry.

About Brainchip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN)

BrainChip is a global technology company that is producing a groundbreaking neuromorphic processor that brings artificial intelligence to the edge in a way that is beyond the capabilities of other products. The chip is high performance, small, ultra-low power and enables a wide array of edge capabilities that include on-chip training, learning and inference. The event-based neural network processor is inspired by the spiking nature of the human brain and is implemented in an industry standard digital process. By mimicking brain processing BrainChip has pioneered a processing architecture, called Akida, which is both scalable and flexible to address the requirements in edge devices. At the edge, sensor inputs are analyzed at the point of acquisition rather than through transmission via the cloud to a data center. Akida is designed to provide a complete ultra-low power and fast AI Edge Network for vision, audio, olfactory and smart transducer applications. The reduction in system latency provides faster response and a more power efficient system that can reduce the large carbon footprint of data centers.

About VORAGO

VORAGO Technologies is a privately held, high technology company based in Austin, Texas with over 15 years of experience in providing radiation-hardened and extreme-temperature solutions for the Hi-rel marketplace. VORAGO's patented HARDSIL technology uses cost-effective high-volume manufacturing to harden any commercially designed semiconductor component for extreme environment operation, and has created a number of solutions throughout Aerospace, Defense and Industrial applications. VORAGO Technologies opens up a new world of possibilities for your designs, no matter how hostile the environment. http://www.voragotech.com

Additional information is available at https://www.brainchipinc.com

Follow BrainChip on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/BrainChip_inc Follow BrainChip on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/7792006

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BrainChip and VORAGO Technologies Agree to Collaborate through the Akida Early Access Program - Business Wire

Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are seen Sunday aboard a helicopter that carried from the SpaceXs Go Navigator recovery ship in the Gulf of Mexico to Naval Air Station Pensacola, where they boarded a NASA jet for a flight back to their home base in Houston. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Two days after becoming the first U.S. space fliers splash down in the sea in more than 45 years, astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on Tuesday described their fiery ride back to Earth aboard SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule to cap a flawless test flight, setting the stage for operational flights beginning later this year.

Riding in their commercial Crew Dragon spacecraft, which they named Endeavour, the astronauts parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico Sunday after plunging through Earths atmosphere on a return trip from the International Space Station.

I personally expected there to be certainly not issues with the vehicle but some challenges, some things that were maybe not quite what we expected, said Hurley, the Crew Dragons spacecraft commander, and a veteran of two prior space shuttle flights. I mean, even on our shuttle flights we had things that happened something that you certainly wouldnt have expected in a real flight.

My credit once again is to the folks at SpaceX, the production folks, the people that put Endeavour together, and certainly our training folks, Hurley said. The mission went just like the simulators. Honestly, from start to finish, all the way, there were really no surprises.

Hurley and Behnken launched May 30 on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, becoming the first astronauts to launch into orbit from U.S. soil since the retirement of the space shuttle nearly a decade ago. The next day, the duo docked with the space station to join commander Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner.

Behnken joined Cassidy on four spacewalks in June and July to finish a multi-year effort to upgrade batteries on the space stations solar power truss. Hurley assisted with operating the stations Canadian-built robotic arm, and both Dragon astronauts helped perform maintenance, scientific experiments and other tasks during their two-month stint on the orbiting research lab.

But the prime objective of Hurley and Behnkens mission designated Demo-2, or DM-2 was to verify the performance and capabilities of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. They were the first astronauts to fly into space on a Crew Dragon, following the unpiloted Demo-1 test flight to the space station in March 2019.

The final major task for the Crew Dragon Endeavour spaceship was the return to Earth.

Hurley and Behnken floated into the capsule Saturday, and the ship autonomously detached from the space station. A series of maneuvers using the Dragons Draco thrusters steered the capsule a safe distance from the station and lined up with the targeted recovery zone in the Gulf of Mexico roughly 34 miles (54 kilometers) off the coast near Pensacola, Florida.

A final 11-minute deorbit burn allowed the Crew Dragon to drop back into the atmosphere. A thermal shield protected the capsule and the astronauts inside from the scorching heat of re-entry, and temperatures outside the spacecraft were expected to reach up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius).

As expected, a sheath of plasma around the spacecraft blocked communications for several minutes between the astronauts and SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California. Mission control regained contact with the crew moments before the capsule deployed two drogue parachutes to stabilize its descent through the atmosphere, then unfurled four large orange and white main chutes to slow the capsule to about 15 mph (24 kilometers per hour) for splashdown.

Hurley and Behnken were the first U.S. astronauts to return to Earth for a water landing since the Apollo-Soyuz mission in July 1975.

The Crew Dragons return to Earthwas more than what Doug and I expected, said Behnken, who served as the spacecrafts pilot.

As we kind of descended through the atmosphere, I personally was surprised at just how quickly the events all transpired, Behnken told reporters Tuesday. It seemed just like a couple minutes later after the (deorbit) burn was complete, we could look out the windows and see the clouds rushing by at a much accelerated rate.

Once we descended a little bit into the atmosphere, Dragon really came alive, Behnken said. It started to fire thrusters and keep us pointed in the appropriate direction. The atmosphere starts to make noise. You can hear that rumble outside the vehicle, and as the vehicle tries to control, you feel that little bit of shimmy in your body. And our bodies were much better attuned to the environment, so we could feel those small rolls, pitches, and yaws. All those little motions were things we could pick up on inside the vehicle.

It took just 12 minutes from the time that the Crew Dragon encountered the uppermost reaches of the discernible atmosphere until splashdown. NASAs winged space shuttles made a more gradual descent, taking roughly 30 minutes from the start of re-entry until touchdown on a runway.

As we descended, through the atmosphere, the thrusters were firing almost continuously, Behnken said. I did record some audio of it, but it doesnt sound like a machine, it sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere with all the puffs that are happening from the thrusters and the atmospheric noise. It just continues to gain magnitude as you descend down through the atmosphere. I think we both really, really noticed that aspect of things.

Behnken, a 50-year-old veteran of two space shuttle missions, also described what the crew felt when the Crew Dragons trunk section jettisoned just before the deorbit burn, along with the sensations inside the spaceship when mortars fired to deploy the parachutes.

All the separation events, from the trunk separation through the parachute firings were very much like getting hit in the back of the chair with a baseball bat just a crack, and then you get some sort of a motion associated with that, Behnken said.

He said that feeling was pretty light for the trunk separation, but with the parachutes it was a pretty significant jolt, and a couple of jolts as you go through dis-reefing (expansion) of the parachutes as well.

Behnken said he quoted to Hurley during the re-entry a humorous scene from the 1985 comedy filmSpies Like Us,where Chevy Chase asks DanAykroyd if he wants some coffee after training in a spinning centrifuge.

I took a line from an old movie that Doug and I were both familiar with at one point, he said. Under the G-load of about 4.2 Gs, I said, Want to get some coffee, much like wed seen in an old movie that we had watched because that was really the feeling that we had. Thats the best way to describe if youve seen an old movie that happened to have some guys whod been in a centrifuge. Thats what we felt like.

The Crew Dragon capsule is equipped with an altimeter to estimate the ships altitude using GPS navigation data, and the astronauts were watching the display during the final descent under the parachutes.

Its not super-accurate everywhere that youre located, so we got below zero for our altitude on that indicator, which was a little bit surprising, and then we felt the splash and we saw it splash up over the windows. It was just a great relief, I think, for both of us at that point, Behnken said.

SpaceX provided audio recordings from the Crew Dragons first orbital test flight to help prepare Hurley and Behnken for the ride during launch and re-entry. Behnken said that helped the astronauts know what to expect as the rode the Crew Dragon for the first time.

We were really comfortable coming through the atmosphere even though it felt like we were inside of an animal, Behnken said.

He said it was difficult to see out the windows, which are located near the astronauts feet, during the period of entry with the highest G-loads. Instead, the astronauts focused on their touchscreen displays.

The thermal control system inside the capsule was designed to keep the temperature below 85 degrees Fahrenheit, or 29 degrees Celsius, as temperatures reached their hottest outside the spacecraft during entry.

I do feel like I felt some warming of the capsule on the inside, Behnken said.

Behnken offered a similarly vivid account of the ride into orbit on top of SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket. The astronauts were the first people to rocket into space on a Falcon 9.

By the time the capsule was through the hottest part of re-entry and the G-forces subsided, the capsules windows were blackened from the ordeal. Scorch marks were also visible on the outer skin of the crew capsule, and those were anticipated by SpaceX and NASA.

You can see from just an overall view of the capsule that re-entry is a pretty demanding environment, with the different scorches on the vehicle, and the windows were not spared any of that, Hurley said. To look out the windows, you could basically tell that it was daylight but very little else.

Hurley said the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft was rock solid during the descent back to Earth.

Personally, I expected the entry to diverge somewhat from what we saw in the simulation, Hurley said. What I mean by that is as the capsule gets into the thicker atmosphere just prior to the drogues (parachutes) with Dragon, I expected there to be some divergence in attitude control because its a real tough problem for the ship as it gets into thicker air to maintain perfect attitude control.

He expected the vehicle might command the drogue parachutes to deploy a bit early to help stabilize its attitude, or orientation. That wasnt required Sunday.

The vehicle was rock solid right up until the nominal drogue deploy altitude, Hurley said. You could feel it, you felt the decel (deceleration), you knew the drogues both worked, and then it was the same with the mains. We felt the different stages of dis-reef, and then right to the impact in the water We kind of had a feeling that it would not be as much (of an impact) as a (Russian) Soyuz landing as it was described to us, but it was going to be a pretty firm splashdown, and then even how we bobbed in the water, and how the vehicle sat in the water.

By all accounts, the Crew Dragon aced the test flight. NASA expects to convene a review in late August or early September to formally certify the Crew Dragon for operational crew rotation flights to and from the space station.

Three NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut are training for the first operational Crew Dragon mission, known as Crew-1, for launch on a six-month expedition to the space station as soon as late September. Sources said the late September launch schedule is somewhat optimistic, and theres a chance SpaceXs Crew-1 launch might be delayed until after the launch of the next Russian Soyuz crew capsule, which is set for Oct. 14.

So my compliments to SpaceX and the commercial crew program. The vehicle performed exactly how it was supposed to, and you feel really good about Crew-1, and what they should expect and what they should see when they fly their mission, Hurley said.

For now, NASA and SpaceX officials say they remain hopeful for a Crew-1 launch before the end of next month.

After splashdown, the crew waited for SpaceXs recovery team to arrive at the capsule and hoist it onto a recovery vessel. Once on-board the boat, the astronauts waited the SpaceX team to ensure there were no toxic vapors leaking from the capsules propulsion system, then technicians and medical personnel opened the hatch to help Hurley and Behnken out of the spacecraft.

Hurley said the astronauts took some time after splashdown to test out a satellite phone they had on-board. If they had landed off course well away from SpaceXs recovery team, they could have used the phone to call rescue forces.

The astronauts first tried calling SpaceX mission control in California.

When we called they said standby, Hurley said. Sowe decided we would exercise our judgment and use our phone to call some other folks.

Hurley joked Sunday night that the astronauts were making prank satellite phone calls to whoever we could get ahold of, which was kind of fun.

They called NASAs flight director and their wives both veteran astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Hi, this is Bob and Doug. Were in the ocean.'

This was a great chance to reassure them that we were in the water, we were ok, we were feeling good, Hurley said. And at that point, we were still waiting on SpaceX, so we just decided to call a few other people that we knew their phone numbers.

After getting out of the SpaceX capsule, getting out of their pressure suits and completing initial medical checks, the astronauts rode in a helicopter from SpaceXs recovery vessel to Naval Air Station Pensacola, where they got on a NASA jet for the trip back to their home base in Houston to be reunited with their families.

Their first meal back on Earth? A pizza.

Amid an exercise protocol to help readapt to Earths gravity, the astronauts said they are looking forward to spending time with their families. The astronauts began training for the mission in 2015.

Theres a lot of stuff to do in the next few weeks, Hurley said. Were hoping at some point to take some time off and share some more time with our families since they were the ones that really had to sacrifice over the last five years.

The astronauts said their experience flying the Crew Dragon gives them confidence the spacecraft is ready for regular crew rotation flights, pending analysis of all the data from the Demo-2 mission.

They do need to look at the data from our entry, Behnken said. Its not just the end users anecdotes of how well it performed. They will do a very thorough review, both on the SpaceX side and the NASA side, to make sure that theyre comfortable. But from a crew perspective, I think its definitely ready to go.

There are things that could be improved to make things a little bit more comfortable, or a little bit more efficient inside the vehicle for those crews. But from a crew perspective, I think were perfectly comfortable that Crew-1 is ready when they finish the engineering and analysis associated with certification, Behnken said.

Hurley added that the extension of the Demo-2 missions duration from several days to two months also offered a chance of engineers to gather more data on the capsules performance, increasing confidence that the spacecraft will be ready for the roughly-six Crew-1 mission beginning later this year.

Theres a certification process that Endeavour hasnt completed yet, and it will likely be weeks, Hurley said. From my experience of flying fighters and testing fighters theres a lot of scrutiny on a first light, and theres a lot of work that goes into a first flight, but you cant let your guard down, and youve got to take a look at the data, youve got to listen to the hardware, and its probably going to take a few flights.

We certainly did our best, and I think the teams did their best, to script this flight to be a full-up test flight, but there are certainly things on Dragon that could be tested more, Hurley said.

Behnkens wife is astronaut Megan McArthur. NASA announced last week she will be the pilot on the Crew-2 mission, which is slated launch in the spring of 2021 and will use the same reusable Crew Dragon spaceship flown by Hurley and Behnken on the Demo-2 test flight.

For me, I think in the short term I transition into a support role, Behnken said Tuesday. Illdefinitely be focused on making sure that her mission is as successful as possible and supporting her just as she did for me over the last five years with the uncertainty in our launch dates and the uncertainty in our return dates.

Its definitely her turn to focus on getting her mission, while I take care of the things that need to be taken care of for our home life, said Behnken, an Air Force colonel and flight test engineer.

Throughout their flight, Hurley and Behnken shared images on Twitter of daily life on the International Space Station and spectacular snapshots of planet Earth, showing views of cities, mountain ranges, oceans and tropical cyclones.

The perspective that you have from low Earth orbit of our planet is just one of just complete awe, said Hurley, a retired Marine Corps colonel and fighter pilot. First of all, of how beautiful the planet is, that there are no borders that you can see from space that the atmosphere is so thin.

The United States, and the world, has been dealing with so much chaos and drama, and the pandemic, and all the things that have been going on in the world, Hurley said. If it were me, it would make me feel better to see these pictures from space, so we just felt like it was a way to have folks maybe have a distraction for awhile, and also to appreciate the planet that weve been given.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Dragon astronauts describe sounds and sensations of return to Earth - Spaceflight Now

Alumnus Helping NASA Return to the Moon by2024

No one on Earth has stepped foot on the Moon since Apollo 17 landed there in December 1972. But NASA is relying on the new space exploration program, Artemis, to change history and take the first woman and the next man to the moonby 2024.

Georgia Southern alumnus Andy Warren (87) is one of the engineers helping NASA return astronauts to the moon. He started his career with the space agency in 1988, two years after the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

I was looking for a job and they were hiring. Honestly it was never something I thought about doing growing up but it gets in your blood, Warren said. Its very exciting and fulfilling work. I have a passionfor it.

Warren works at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, as manager of the Cross-Program Integration team for NASAs new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). A team at MSFC is designing the powerful SLS rocket that will send the crew in the Orion spacecraft to the moon and eventually to Mars. The Orion crew capsule is being developed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the ground systems including the launch pad are being handled by a team at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Warren said the cross-agency team ensures that the systems, including the rocket components, all work together when the flight vehicle gets assembled and launchedat KSC.

Prior to the Artemis program, Warren worked on the Space Shuttle program in various capacities from 1988 through the last mission in 2011. In his early years, he worked on ground systems including the large cranes that were used to assemble the shuttle. After that, he served as the management intern to the launch director, the person who gives the final go for launch on launch day.

I sat right next to him in the control room during several shuttle launches, said Warren, who grew up in North Augusta, South Carolina. It was an amazing experience because you could just feel the raw power. You could actually physically feel it rumbling off the launch pad.

Warren was a Georgia Southern student when he watched the Challenger explosion. It was later determined that the accident was caused by the solid rocket booster O-rings not working properly at cold temperatures. During Shuttle mission STS-132 in May 2010, Warren served as the solid rocket booster representative on the Shuttle Mission Management Team and gave the final concurrence (go) that the solid rocket boosters were safe forlaunch.

It was one of the highlights of my career, he said. When talking with students, I present it in the context that theres nothing special about me, but you never know where youll end up and the opportunities that youll have in the future if you apply yourself.

As the Cross-Program Integration manager for the SLS program, Warren is excited about the upcoming test of the ambitious rocket that has been in development for the past decade. The SLS relies on long-proven hardware from the space shuttle, including the engines and solid-fuel boosters. But the rocket is different in that it has been designed for launching both astronauts and robotic scientific missions for deep space exploration hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth, while the space shuttle was designed for travel a few hundred miles above the Earth.

Our first flight will be a test to demonstrate the ground systems, rocket and crew systems. It will go around the back of the moon next year, Warren said. Then about two years later, well launch astronauts in the Orion crew capsule beyond the moon and back to Earth. Thats further than any humans have ever been from Earth. Then well launch a crew, which will land on the moon.

As NASA embarks on this next era of space flight, Warren is confident it will inspire a new generation of explorers.

I think the future is really bright, he said. In the 60s, we had the beginnings of space flight and ever since we went to the moon, people have been dreaming of going to Mars and deep space exploration. And now were actually building the rockets. We dream big and were currently building a really big rocket to achieve thosedreams.

Warren is an active Georgia Southern alumnus. He serves on the College of Science and Mathematics advisory board and returns to campus every year to meet with students, professors and administrators. SandraBennett

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To the Moon and Back Again - Georgia Southern University Newsroom

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Two special guests looked on as NASA successfully launched its Perseverance Mars rover on July 30, beginning a nearly seven-month journey to the Red Planet.

Those onlookers were Alex Mather, a 7th-grade student from Virginia, and Vaneeza Rupani, a high-school senior from Alabama, and they earned their vantage point on the roof of an engineering building at Kennedy Space Center in an unusual way: with names.

In advance of the launch of what was then known only as the Mars 2020, mission, NASA challenged children in grades K-12 to suggest a name for the six-wheeled, car-sized rover and write a compelling essay as to why their moniker was the best choice. The winner would not only get to name the rover, but also travel to Florida to see it launch.

Related: NASA's Mars Perseverance rover mission to the Red Planet (photos)

Alex and Vaneeza were both finalists, and in March of this year, NASA announced that Alex's name, Perseverance, was the winner. Shortly afterward, the agency revealed that Vaneeza's suggestion, Ingenuity, would adorn the rover's small travel companion, the first interplanetary helicopter.

The two students traveled to Florida with their families to watch the launch full of excitement for the mission.

"We were a little disappointed [that my name wasn't chosen]," 17-year-old Vaneeza said when asked how she felt about her name being selected for the helicopter. "And then I got the call for the helicopter."

"There was a little disbelief at first but mostly excitement," she added.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the students weren't sure they would be able to travel to the launch, but Vaneeza said her whole family was very excited and fortunate to be here. "I'm very, very excited and trying to [stay] calm," she said.

Vaneeza is an aspiring engineer and says her interest in space blossomed at a young age. She attributes this to her father, stating that his passion for space helped spur her interest. "Ever since I was little, I have been reading about space and interested in it," she said. "I take a lot of it from my dad."

She first found out about the contest while reading headlines on the NASA website and decided to give it a go. Vaneeza said that when coming up with her name, she tried to answer the question of how it's possible to do science and engineering on other planets. "I thought ingenuity answered that question best," she said.

Alex Mather, a 14-year-old, said he was beyond excited to be at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch. "This is an amazing place, with amazing people, doing amazing things," he said.

When asked about why he chose the name Perseverance, he explained that to him this mission was just as much about humanity as it was exploring Mars.

"Mars missions take a lot of perseverance, but this mission to me is a lot about being human," he said. "One of our greatest qualities is perseverance."

Alex said he grew up obsessed with science but his fascination for space came later, after a visit to Space Camp in Alabama. His time there fueled his passion for space, he said, and when the competition popped up he knew he had to enter.

Since winning the contest, Alex had been able to meet a few of the members of the Perseverance team, describing them as his role models in life.

Related: The search for life on Mars (a photo timeline)

His trip to Florida to watch the rover take flight almost didn't happen as the pandemic swept the nation. Alex said his first priority this spring was to figure out how he was going to finish the school year; once that was settled and his family thought they could travel safely, the trip to Florida was on.

"Just being here, it's absolutely worth it," he said.

Alex and Vaneeza and their families were able to watch the launch from Kennedy Space Center property. Standing on the balcony of the Operations Support Building II, the duo watched in awe as the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket took flight. It was each student's first launch.

Following blast-off, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator of science, chatted with Alex and Vaneeza in a short video posted to Twitter.

"I'm over the moon," Vaneeza said, describing her feelings after the launch. "That was probably the coolest thing I've ever seen and I can't wait to see it land on Mars in February."

Alex agreed. "It was just so overwhelming on a sensory level," he said. "It's indescribable."

Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Teens who named Mars rover and helicopter are 'over the moon' following launch - Space.com

A 35-minute film exposure captures people in Piedmont, N.C., bathed in the glow of astronomers red flashlights and observing the Perseid meteor shower during its peak in August 1994.

Heres one thing coronavirus cant cancel.

The annual Perseid meteor shower, which NASA calls the best meteor shower of the year and which inspired singer John Denver to write Rocky Mountain High nearly 50 years ago peaks early this week.

Depending on the weather and where viewers watch, the celestial spectacle could deliver as many as 50 to 75 shooting stars per hour over California and much of the United States with the most expected between Tuesday night after sunset until to the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The Perseids are a reliable meteor shower, said Andrew Fraknoi, emeritus chairman of the astronomy department at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. And its in August, when we have warm summer nights, when most kids arent in school. Its a great time for families to be able to go outside and take a look.

The Perseid meteor shower, first documented by Chinese astronomers in 36 A.D., is visible every year between late July and mid-August.

But the shooting stars arent really stars. The meteor shower occurs every year when Earth, as it orbits around the sun, crosses a trail of dust, dirt and other debris from a famous comet, Swift-Tuttle, which itself orbits the sun once every 133 years. The comet is just a huge ball of ice, with rocks, dust and other debris inside it. With each pass around the sun, some of that debris breaks away, and is left behind in the comets wake, creating a giant oval that extends from beyond Pluto to around the sun.

As Earth passes through that debris field each year, some of those tiny bits of sand, metal and rock burn up when they come into Earths atmosphere, creating the flashing trails we see across the night sky.

Thats right: What looks like a huge streak of fire in the night sky an astounding, powerful pyrotechnic marvel is usually just a little piece of grit, smaller than a thumbtack, miles up in the sky. But it is moving at 132,000 miles an hour, or nearly 37 miles per second, and burning at up to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it fizzles.

What you are seeing burning up is a little piece of dirt which is part of the original pieces that formed the solar system 5 billion years ago, Fraknoi said. Its kind of neat.

So how should you watch it?

The best way is to dress warmly, go outside, turn off lights and look for a broad patch of sky, away from trees. If you can drive to a rural location, like a road or park in the hills around the Bay Area, youre chances of seeing more are better.

Pick an observing spot away from bright lights, lay on your back, and look up! said Emily Clay of NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in a blog post Thursday. You dont need any special equipment to view the Perseids just your eyes.

Its better not to use binoculars or a telescope. Their field of vision is too narrow.

And, says Fraknoi, be sure to give your eyes at least 15 minutes to adjust to the dark.

The mistake people make most often is that they dont allow their eyes to adapt, he said. They get out of the car, they look out and say the newspaper lied to me! And they give up. In a movie theater you cant see whats on the floor until your eyes adapt. Not waiting is a mistake.

Fog or clouds can block the view, so locations away from the coast are best.

Apart from inspiring people about nature and space for hundreds of generations, the Perseids also inspired a famous song. In 1971, singer John Denver and several friends took a camping trip to Williams Lake, near Aspen, Colorado, to watch the Perseids. Denver, then 27, was so moved he wrote Rocky Mountain High, which became a smash hit for lyrics like Ive seen it raining fire in the sky and shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye.

Imagine a moonless night in the Rockies in the dead of summer and you have it, he wrote later in his autobiography. I had insisted to everybody that it was going to be a glorious display.

Denver died in 1997 after a light plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay. Ten years later, state legislators named his Perseid-inspired ballad one of Colorados two official state songs.

The Earth is just one planet among many, and we are in a cosmic setting, said Fraknoi. That can help make our problems seem a little bit smaller. Kids find astronomy and dinosaurs to be the most exciting parts of science. Stars, planets, Mars, and space exploration are really exciting to them. We cant show them dinosaurs any more, except in museums. But we can still show them the sky.

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Perseid meteor shower 2020 How to watch what could be the best show of the year - The Mercury News

A scorched Dragon capsule swooped from the heavens on Aug. 2 to restore Americas prominence in human spaceflight. Tucked safely inside were two NASA astronauts and one giant piece of baggage for the U.S.-Russia relationship:

Both countries now have a ride to the International Space Station.

This station has housed Americans and Russians, living and working side by side, for nearly two decades. But for the past nine years, Russia alone could fly people there. Its pride and budget were bolstered by the U.S. purchasing rides into space.

No longer. As the U.S. resumes launching astronauts from its own soil an ability it does not wish to lose again policy experts are watching to see if this affects the countries relationship.

On HoustonChronicle.com: NASA, SpaceX bring astronauts home in Gulf of Mexico splashdown

Through their civil space programs, Americans and Russians have sidestepped election meddling and economic sanctions to cooperate on a greater good. This relationship has helped bridge the two cultures, with astronauts learning Russian and cosmonauts visiting their counterparts homes in Houston.

Its one of the few areas that have been somewhat immune to the tensions that we see in other areas and domains, said Gregory Miller, an associate professor at the U.S. Air Forces Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. If you take that away or reduce that cooperation, its just one less restraint on further tensions.

To be clear, Miller does not think the U.S. launching astronauts will start a war. Victoria Samson, a space policy expert at the Secure World Foundation, similarly called it a ripple in our relations but not necessarily a catastrophic tidal wave.

NASA said its in active discussions to fly cosmonauts on U.S. spacecraft owned by SpaceX (and later Boeing) and to continue flying astronauts on Russian spacecraft. Its important to have people on both the U.S. and Russian segments of the International Space Station.

Building on our solid relationship with Roscosmos aboard the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit, Im hopeful there are opportunities for NASA and Roscosmos to expand our collaboration farther into the solar system, including the moon, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.

But Samson and others said the introduction of commercial companies makes Russia uncomfortable. And with NASA no longer buying seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, its Roscosmos space agency loses an important source of funding for its space budget thats already a fraction of what NASA receives.

For now, Russia and the U.S. remain interdependent on the International Space Station. But this station will eventually get retired it's set to operate through 2024, though that will likely be extended leaving a big question as to what U.S.-Russian relations will look like once astronauts and cosmonauts no longer share a home some 250 miles above Earth.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon didnt just revive U.S. human spaceflight. It introduced a new partner: SpaceX founder Elon Musk, an outspoken billionaire who is eager to show that commercial entities can build, own and operate the vehicles that carry people into space.

On May 30, the day SpaceX launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, Musk couldnt help but take a jab at Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos.

The trampoline is working, he said.

It was the punchline six years in the making: Rogozin, upset about U.S. sanctions in 2014, suggested that Americans use a trampoline to reach the space station.

Musk called his comment an inside joke, and Rogozin initially said he loved it. He congratulated NASA on the launch.

But a few days later, he released a lengthy op-ed in which he criticized the space shuttle (its 2011 retirement began U.S. dependence on Russias Soyuz spacecraft) for its immense costliness and unforgiveable failure rate. He touted Russia in the piece that ran in Forbes for staying alone for the humanity to support the International Space Station operability and deliver the crews there.

And he did not appreciate the humor.

When our partners finally managed to carry out a successful test of their spacecraft, we didn't get anything but jokes and mockery, Rogozin said, although it would not be out of place to thank our Soyuz, its Soviet developers and Russian engineers who continued modernizing this most reliable spacecraft in the world. It would not be out of place to thank us that despite personal and sectoral sanctions we did not go to pieces and preserved cooperation in space.

Roscosmos did not respond to email requests for comment.

SpaceX, with its ability to replace the Soyuz, makes Russia uncomfortable because it threatens a pillar of Russias culture and identity, said Pavel Luzin, who lives in Perm, Russia, and has a doctorate in international relations. Luzin has studied space policy since 2008.

He said that for Russians, the space program is a yardstick they use to judge the countrys political and economic system if its doing well they view the government more favorably.

Thats why (the) Kremlin hates Elon Musk: he shows that the freedom of business activity, the market economy and the political freedoms are much more effective, Luzin said in an email. Therefore, Dmitry Rogozin in his papers and interviews tries to belittle Musks achievements and tries to show that private investments of SpaceX and other commercial space companies are nothing without huge spending of the American government.

Russia has long been opposed to a commercial space sector; a sentiment first voiced by the former Soviet Union when drafting the Outer Space Treaty that provided a framework for governing the exploration and use of space.

This treaty was signed in 1967 after the Soviet Union placed the first satellite and man into space in 1957 and 1961, respectively, and before the U.S. put the first man on the moon in 1969.

At that time, the Soviet Union did not want the private sector operating in space, but allowed for a compromise: Governments would be responsible for overseeing any non-government entities.

The relationship slowly moved from competitive to cooperative cosmonauts and astronauts shook hands in space in 1975 but had its ups and downs. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, former President George H. W. Bush was looking for new ways to collaborate.

Space was an obvious area, said John Logsdon, a retired professor and founder of George Washington Universitys Space Policy Institute. And in particular, the Russians needed money.

On HoustonChronicle.com: International Space Station: an orbiting home and lab for two decades

The U.S. didnt want Russia selling its technology or having its rocket workforce moving to Iran or North Korea, Logsdon said, so America began allowing commercial satellites to launch on Russian rockets.

And then Russia proposed merging its plans for a next-generation space station with Americas plans for Space Station Freedom. Around that time, Russia had more experience operating space stations than NASA.

The Russians involvement in the program was a major factor in order to be successful in the International Space Station, said George W.S. Abbey, senior fellow in space policy at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and a former director of NASAs Johnson Space Center.

Also important was the countrys tried-and-true Soyuz rocket and spacecraft.

Todays Soyuz-2 rocket (which shares the same name as the spacecraft it propels into space) can directly trace its lineage to the rocket that launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, said Phil Smith, a space industry analyst at Bryce Space and Technology.

The R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile has been the basis for 25 variants of the Soyuz rocket that have launched more than 1,900 times.

Its a workhorse, Smith said. Its one of the most successful rockets ever built.

There is no equivalent track record in America, he said, as modern rockets dont trace their lineage directly back to the early days of space exploration.

Its the future priorities of Russias civil space program that are being questioned. Russia says its building a vehicle to replace the Soyuz spacecraft that has had some 170 successful flights, as well as additional modules for the International Space Station, but both projects are underfunded and behind schedule.

There have been lots of proclamations of Russian future plans, Logsdon said, but not much evidence that theyre following through on those proclamations.

Luzin said Russias focus on maintaining access to the International Space Station, which Roscosmos did without placing enough emphasis on a long-term strategy for space exploration, has weakened its position. As the U.S. develops a new spacecraft, rocket and orbiting facility for the moon, Russia will have little to offer in a partnership, Luzin said.

It was unable to use these years for developing its own manned spacecraft and launch vehicle for replacement of the old-fashioned Soyuz, he said. The main issue in U.S.-Russia relations in space now is how to continue the partnership after the ISS-era.

Its lesser budget doesnt help, either. Based off budget documents and his own analysis, Luzin said Russias space budget was roughly $3.2 billion last year. Of that, $1.4 billion was for the countrys civil space program, $1 billion was for its military space program, $437 million was for its global navigation satellite system and $358 million was for its rocket launch sites.

For comparison, NASAs budget was $21.5 billion in fiscal year 2019. Its more than $22.6 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

In the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020, NASA paid nearly $86 million for each astronaut launched into space (Jessica Meir in September and Chris Cassidy in April). The agency will pay $90.3 million to launch Kate Rubins in October, a fee that also covers training and other services related to launch.

The American payments were highly important for Russias space industry and for Russias civil space program, Luzin said, and now the industry lost the source.

Samson said U.S.-Russia cooperation doesnt have to be in human spaceflight. The countries could partner on science missions, or they could share information for tracking satellites and space debris.

Ultimately, the money NASA saves by flying with commercial companies could be put toward its Artemis program seeking to return humans to the moon. Houston, the home of human spaceflight, would certainly benefit from this, said Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.

It potentially equates to additional people working, he said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: NASA shares its vision for creating sustained human presence on the moon

Miller suggested the U.S. use the money its saving to help subsidize another countrys space program.

He said providing funding for another country, for instance the United Arab Emirates, to fly on the Soyuz would help keep Russias space program funded, preventing its knowledge and technology from being sold to more adversarial countries, while developing U.S. ties with a new international space partner.

We dont want to sever ties in space or do anything that might reduce cooperation when there is this other competitor, for lack of a better term, he said.

That other competitor is China. In June, the U.S. Department of Defense said China and Russia present the most immediate and serious threats to U.S. space operations as they develop counterspace capabilities which may disrupt, degrade or destroy space systems and have military doctrines that view space as import to modern warfare.

Samson said she doesnt think Russia and China will get too cozy as partners in space. Like the U.S. and Russia, the two countries have their own complicated relationship. Rather, she said Chinas rise in space capabilities means there are more players that make the U.S. uneasy (in space and elsewhere) that America now has to monitor and manage relationships with in space.

The biggest thing thats changed since the cold war is that this is no longer a bilateral conversation, Samson said. Its multi-lateral.

andrea.leinfelder@chron.com

twitter.com/a_leinfelder

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Space race? America's new path to the ISS could affect relationship with Russia - Houston Chronicle

A video from SpaceX shows the companys Crew Dragon capsule plunging toward the Gulf of Mexico, then unfurling a series of parachutes to slow the spaceship carrying two NASA astronauts from 350 mph to a relatively gentle 15 mph for splashdown Sunday.

The dramatic tracking video released by SpaceX late Monday shows the capsule deploying two drogue chutes at an altitude of around 18,000 feet, or 5,500 meters, while moving at about 350 mph, or more than 560 kilometers per hour.

Moments later, four giant orange and white main parachutes fired out of mortars on the side of the Crew Dragon capsule at an altitude of 6,000 feet (1,800 meters), then began opening to their full size to slow the spaceship from 119 mph (191 kilometers per hour) to around 15 mph (24 kilometers per hour) before splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico around 34 miles (54 kilometers) off the coast of Florida near Pensacola.

The successful return to Earth with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken closed out a 64-day test flight, the first orbital mission by astronauts on a U.S. spaceship since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011. The commercial capsule was built and is owned by SpaceX, the private space transportation company founded by Elon Musk in 2002.

The successful two-month test flight to the International Space Station sets the stage for the first operational flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft later this year. That mission will deliver four astronauts to the space station for a stay lasting around six months.

Hurley and Behnken named their reusable Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour after NASAs retired space shuttle, on which both astronauts flew earlier in their careers.

The Dragon Endeavour spacecraft launched May 30 atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, then autonomously docked with the space station May 31. During their two months on the orbiting research complex, Hurley and Behnken assisted the stations other three crew members with maintenance, scientific experiments, and a series of spacewalks to complete a multi-year effort to upgrade batteries on the labs solar power truss.

Hurley and Behnken boarded their Dragon spacecraft Saturday and undocked from the space station, heading for an on-target splashdown Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico.

For more details, read our full story on the splashdown of the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft with Hurley and Behnken. Additional photos of the Crew Dragons splashdown, and views of Hurley and Behnkens exit from the spacecraft and return to shore via helicopter, are posted below.

The photos also show numerous private vessels approaching the spacecraft after splashdown. NASA and SpaceX officials say they will reassess their security and ocean clearance policies before the next Crew Dragon splashdown.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Relive the final descent of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft - Spaceflight Now

Last week, Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) delayed its first commercial space flight again: this time to 2021. However, the buzzy aerospace start-up offered investors and fans a new reason to be excited, announcing that it had completed the initial "Mission Concept Review" for a new supersonic jet that would travel at Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound, or roughly 2,300 miles per hour).

Virgin Galactic's management appears to be very excited about this concept. Earlier this year, then-CEO (and current chief space officer) George Whitesides argued that the annual revenue opportunity from supersonic passenger travel could be $10 billion to $15 billion. Unfortunately, the business plan is unlikely to live up to the hype.

The design concept revealed by Virgin Galactic calls for a small cabin seating between nine and 19 passengers, along with a triangular delta wing and engines supplied by Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce has experience in this area, having built the engines for the Concorde supersonic jet decades ago. The plane would reach Mach 3 at an altitude exceeding 60,000 feet.

Virgin Galactic envisions a flexible cabin that could support luxurious business class and first class seating. The company noted that the proposed supersonic jet would be able to use existing airport infrastructure. Virgin Galactic also mentioned using sustainable aviation fuel to reduce emissions.

Image source: Virgin Galactic.

The commercial failure of the Concorde -- the only supersonic jet ever to see regular passenger service -- is a big reason for caution. Despite high hopes initially, airlines lost interest due to development delays and cost overruns. Only 14 Concorde jets were ever used for commercial flights, and the only customers were British Airways and Air France, which faced government pressure to fly the Concorde, which was developed by a British-French joint venture.

Aside from the high cost, there were numerous problems with the Concorde concept. Most notably, many countries (including the U.S.) have banned supersonic flights over land due to the "sonic booms" that come from breaking the sound barrier. While the FAA is reviewing its noise standards for supersonic flight, it is not reconsidering the ban on supersonic flight over land. Unless policies change, these restrictions dramatically reduce the addressable market for supersonic travel.

Supersonic travel is also extremely environmentally unfriendly. The Concorde burned about 6,700 gallons of fuel per hour. Next-generation supersonic jets are likely to burn five to seven times as much fuel per passenger as comparable subsonic jets, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. Leaving aside the cost of all that fuel, the environmental impact could lead to regulatory issues and cause many people to avoid supersonic flights. Using sustainable jet fuel (such as biofuels) would only partially address this issue.

A Mach 3 jet would make round-trip travel in one day feasible for 85% of the most popular global airline routes, according to Virgin Galactic's management. That may be true in theory, but the nature of time zones limits the utility of long-haul supersonic travel.

For example, on the popular New York-London route, a traveler taking a 6 a.m. flight out of New York wouldn't get to London until 2 p.m., assuming a realistic gate-to-gate travel time of three hours. That might be fine if the goal is to squeeze in a single two-hour meeting. But if you need a full day in London, a traditional subsonic redeye flight is more convenient, given that virtually all full-service airlines have flat-bed seats in international business class today. By contrast, taking a supersonic redeye flight would mean arriving in London with no time to sleep.

Supersonic travel would be more useful on transpacific routes -- assuming the plane had sufficient range. Many major routes from the West Coast to Asia and Australia are 6,000 miles long or more. The Concorde didn't have enough range to serve such routes. Virgin Galactic may opt for greater range, but that would come at the cost of even higher fuel burn.

The Concorde supersonic jet was a massive commercial failure. Image source: Getty Images.

Whereas the Concorde at least aimed to serve moderately wealthy passengers (with the potential to seat up to 128 customers), Virgin Galactic's Mach 3 concept is basically a high-speed luxury business jet. Ticket prices will be lower than the $250,000 Virgin Galactic plans to charge for brief trips into space, but not by all that much.

Sales of large, long-range business jets have been lackluster in recent years. Virgin Galactic is unlikely to do any better. The appeal of a jet capable of flying Mach 3 will be severely limited by the acquisition cost, operating costs, environmental impact, and lack of utility for many heavily traveled routes.

Perhaps Virgin Galactic will find a way to add range, mitigate environmental impacts, and bring the cost of supersonic travel down to a reasonable level. However, I wouldn't count on it, and neither should you. Investors should hope management sticks to its main niche of space travel and doesn't throw away lots of money trying to develop a supersonic jet that is extremely unlikely to be profitable.

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Virgin Galactic's Supersonic Jet Is a Commercial Failure in the Making - Motley Fool

Spaceflight Inc.has announced on August 3 during the opening of Small Satellite Conference 2020that it will be launching its new programs to deliver greater flexibility to its smallsat customers needing frequent, reliable, and affordable ways to meet specific mission needs.

Spaceflight Inc. is an American private aerospace company and the leading satellite rideshare and mission provider that started in 2009.

Curt Blake, Spaceflight's president, and CEO said that there are a lot of things that they have learned over the past decade, as the need for flexibility on contracting and switching vehicles, orbital destinations, booking options, and integration services.

(Photo: Twitter)Big news to kick off #Smallsat2020. We're launching multiple initiatives to provide greater flexibility for our customers. New OTV, new web initiatives, and more.

"With our expertise working with all major launch vehicles, we have the unique advantage of building flexibility into all aspects of our business to meet our customers' individual mission needs. It's foundational to our vision of getting spacecraft on-orbit exactly when and where our customers want, and we're excited to unveil several first-of-their-kind programs to support it," Blake said.

In that sense, their new programs are designed to increase flexibility in all aspects of the launch spectrum, including the following:

Read:NASA Launches "Honey I Shrunk the NASA Payload" Contest with $160,000 Prizes at Stake: Here's How to Qualify

What you see is what you get. Spaceflight offers programs with no hidden fees, which means that the common practice of initially offering a low price per kilogram for smallsats and charging extra for other services will no longer be a problem.

Spaceflight offers all-in transparent pricing for its launch services.

Like how anyone can book a flight online, Spaceflight has developed a similar way of booking smallsat launches.

Users would only have to input the spacecraft configurations, its orbital destination, desired launch timing, and also the insurance, fuel, and licensing, and then they may reserve using their credit card.

Read Also: China Successfully Launched Its Redesigned New Generation Manned Spaceship

Once the booking is confirmed, users may securely log into the new Mission Control web platform of Spaceflight to manage their mission tasks, upload documents, access templates, and the frequently asked questions (FAQs) section, and to track progress and milestone.

It has become so easy and convenient to view everything associated with current and past launches in this always-available mission control platform.

Spaceflight has announcedthat it will be launching its new space vehicles soon: the Sherpa FX, set to launch on its next SpaceX rideshare mission in December 2020, and Sherpa NG (next generation) group of orbital transfer vehicles that provides flexibility, orbital diversification, and mission assurance.

Spaceflight has developed a rapid and highly flexible reconfigurable separation sequencer that provides industry-leading capabilities for smallsat deployments.

Moreover, the sequences consist of communication hardware to independently downlink separation telemetry and is also designed to be compatible with almost all available separation systems.

Spaceflight introduces its flight-proven program that aims to aid customers to identify and track their spacecraft quickly after the launch. Customers will gain access to information that can facilitate its first contact and early operations, lessen space congestion, and provide the foundation for an effective and responsible space traffic management.

Spaceflight works with different launch vehicles such as the Falcon 9, Antares, Electron, Vega, and PSLV to give its customers launch options. Additionally, they also signed an agreement with new vehicles like SSLV of NSIL, Terran 1 of Relativity, and Alpha of Firefly to accommodate more specific mission plans.

Chief Financial Officer of Astrocast, Kjell Karlsen, noted that delays in the launch are inevitable, but it is their priority to ensure that IoT network constellation gets into orbit by switching launches as efficiently as possible.

To know more about Spaceflight's new services, registered smallsat attendees may visit the virtual exhibit of Spaceflightfrom Monday to Thursday from 10 am to 1 pm MDT to chat with staff, or they may contact sales@spaceflight.comfor more details.

Read More: Missed Falcon 9's Launch Last Month? Catch SpaceX's 10th Batch of Starlink Satellites

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Sending Something to Space? Book Your Launch Now in Spaceflight Inc. and Avail Their Latest Offers - Science Times

Eileen Collins was the first woman to command a space shuttle.

By Geoffrey Cobb

Inducted into theNational Womens Hall of Fame, Eileen Collins has been recognized by Encyclopedia Britannica as one of the top 300 women in history who have changed the world. A former air force colonel, military instructor and test pilot, Collins became both the first female pilot, and first female commander, of a space shuttle.

Eileen Collins was born in Elmira, N.Y., on Nov. 19, 1956. Her Irish ancestors came to America in the mid-1800s, settling in Pennsylvania and Elmira. Collinss love of airplanes and flying began as a child. She recalled, When I was very young and first started reading about astronauts, there were no women astronauts. Inspired as a child by the Mercury astronauts, Collins started reading anything she could find on space and airplanes and especially astronauts. In fourth grade, she read a Junior Scholastic Magazine article on the pros and cons of spending money on the space program, but the 8-year-old Collins could not think of any cons about investing in space exploration.

The absence of female astronauts didnt faze her; however, she kept her dreams of flying in space secret.I never told anybody I wanted to be an astronaut or pilot, she said. I consciously never talked about it because I knew people would say, You cant do that. And I didnt want to hear it Even when I started my flying lessons and this would have been when I was between my junior and senior year in college I didnt tell my friends. I dont think I even told my parents.

She graduated from a junior college with a degree in Math and then matriculated at Syracuse University and her timing was perfect. New opportunities were opening up for women in aviation. In 1978, Collins enlisted in the Air Force and became one of four women admitted to Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training at Oklahomas Vance Air Force Base, where she faced intense scrutiny. During her first month of training, she realized she had a chance to make her childhood dream of space flight a reality. I wanted to be part of our nations space program. Its the greatest adventure on this planet or off the planet, for that matter. I wanted to fly the Space Shuttle.

In 1979, Collins became theAir Forcesfirst femaleflightinstructor at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado, where for the next 11 years she taught both flying and math. As a C-141 Starlifter transport aircraft commander, Collins also participated in the American invasion ofGrenadain 1983, delivering troops and evacuating medical students. She continued her training at the Air Forces Institute of Technology and was one of the first women to attend Air Force Test Pilot School, which she graduated from in 1990, eventually achieving the rank of Air Force Colonel. Collins also earned an M.S. inoperations researchfromStanford Universityin 1986 and an M.A. in space systems management from Webster University, St. Louis, Mo., in 1989. Collins married pilot Pat Youngs in 1987 and is the mother of two children.

Collins was selected to be an astronaut in 1990 and completed astronaut training in July 1991. After tours at Kennedy Space Center, working on the shuttle launch and landing, and at the Johnson Space Center, working as a shuttle engineer and capsule communicator, she made history in 1995 when she became the first woman to fly a space shuttle, successfully piloting Discovery. In recognition of her achievement as the first female shuttle pilot, she received theHarmon Trophy, presented to the worlds top male and female aviators. Two years later, Collins again made history when she became the first female to dock with the Russian space station Mir, piloting Atlantis. Prior to the docking of Discovery with the space station, Collins piloted the shuttle through a full 360 pitch maneuver, becoming the first person to do so with an orbiter, which allowed her crew members to photograph the ships underside for possible damage.

In 1999, with hundreds of hours of experience in space flight under her belt, Collins had her greatest achievement when she became the first ever female to command the space shuttle, piloting Columbia in 1999 during its deployment of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. AfterColumbia was destroyed in the February 2003 disaster, the space shuttle fleet was grounded until July 2005, when Collins commandedDiscoveryon a return to flight mission, checking new safety modifications, while resupplying the International Space Station. The successful mission would mark her final time in space.

In 2006, Collins retired after a 28-year distinguished career in the Air Force, logging more than 6,751 hours in 30 different types of aircraft and more than 872 hours in space on four separate space flights. That same year, Collins won the National Space Trophy and University College Dublinconferred on her the honorary Doctor of Science degree of theNational University of Ireland.

Collins has continued to garner honors and awards. She was asked to speak at the 148thcommencement ofher alma mater Syracuse University. On April 19, 2013, Eileen Collins was inducted into theUnited States Astronaut Hall of Fame. In 2016, Collins was she inducted into the Irish American Hall of Fame and she also spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio before a national audience. The main entrance to Syracuse Hancock International airport was named in her honor as well.

Collins has remained active. She became director of the United Services Automobile Association and has served also the U.S.S.A in a number of other roles. Collins has also served as an analyst covering Shuttle launches and landings forthe CNN network. There was discussion that President Trump would even name her NASA administrator. Today Corning Community College, the place where Collins began her amazing career, honors her with the Eileen Collins Observatory, a fitting tribute to the schools most illustrious graduate.

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Secret dreams of space came through | Arts & Leisure - Irish Echo

By NASAAugust 5, 2020

Expedition 63 Commander and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy installs fluid research hardware inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory modules Microgravity Science Glovebox. Cassidy was working on the Droplet Formation Study that observes how microgravity shapes water droplets possibly improving water conservation and water pressure techniques on Earth. Credit: NASA

Free-flying robots, planetary bodies, and water droplets were just part of Tuesdays research plan aboard the International Space Station. The Expedition 63 trio also serviced a variety of communications gear and life support systems.

NASA and its international partners are planning human missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond and the space station represents a big step in that effort. The orbiting lab provides a unique platform to learn about the long-term effects of microgravity on a variety of systems.

A set of cube-shaped, robot assistants are flying around on their own today inside Japans Kibo laboratory module. Engineers are looking at video and imagery downlinked from the Astrobee devices to understand how the autonomous free-flyers visualize and navigate their way around the station.

Commander Chris Cassidy took a look at dynamic granular material samples this morning that simulate planetary surfaces. The experiment is taking place inside ESAs (European Space Agency) Columbus laboratory module and could inform future planetary exploration missions.

The veteran NASA astronaut also split his time between botany and fluid physics. Cassidy worked on the Plant Habitat-02 checking growth lights and installing an acoustic shield to protect the plants from station noises. Next, he moved onto commercial research to improve water conservation and water pressure techniques on Earth.

In the Russian segment of the station, the two cosmonaut flight engineers worked on their complement of orbital science and lab maintenance. Anatoly Ivanishin serviced video equipment and an air purifier before conducting Earth observations. Ivan Vagner collected air samples for microbial analysis and explored ways to improve interactions between mission controllers, students and space crews.

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Remaining Space Station Crew Busy With Fascinating Research: Free-Flying Robots, Planetary Bodies and Water Droplets - SciTechDaily

Misquitta's experiment will explore why pharmaceutical drugs are less effective when astronauts spend time in microgravity. Misquitta plans to investigate whether spaceflight-induced changes in liver function may underlie the observed changes in drug efficacy. By improving our understanding of how spaceflight affects drug metabolism, Misquitta hopes his project will aid in the design of more effective treatment plans for astronauts as they undertake long-duration missions.

Misquittadeveloped his proposal with guidance from his sponsor, teacher Jessica Quenzer, and his mentor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Dr. Kate Malecek. Misquitta will watch his experiment launch to space in 2021.

This announcement concludes a competitive cycle for the Genes in Space competition. Despite disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, 1082 students across the U.S. submitted a total of 556 applications, from which five finalists were selected. Finalists presented their ideas to a distinguished panel of scientists and educators at the Genes in Space 2020 Finalist Launchpad, a three-day online event. The Finalist Launchpad was streamed live to a worldwide audience for the first time in the contest's history. The Launchpad concluded Thursday afternoon, as the judges announced the selection of this year's winner.

Now in its sixth year, Genes in Space invites students in grades 7 through 12 to design biology experiments that address real-world challenges in space exploration. Previous contest winners have achieved significant milestones through their experiments, including the first use of gene editing technology in space. The competition was founded by miniPCR bio and Boeing, and is sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory, Math for America, and New England Biolabs.

Media contacts:miniPCR bio: Katy Martin, [emailprotected], +1 781-990-8727Boeing: Carrie Arnold, [emailprotected], +1 281-244-4257

SOURCE Genes in Space

https://www.genesinspace.org

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Genes in Space selects winning student experiment to be performed on International Space Station - PRNewswire

NASA would be thrilled if its newly launched Mars rover ended up matching its predecessor's longevity.

The agency's car-sized Curiosity rover celebrates eight (Earth) years on the Red Planet today (Aug. 5), less than a week after the Perseverance rover took flight toward Mars.

The synergy in timing is appropriate; Perseverance shares Curiosity's chassis and "sky crane" landing strategy, among other features. And the new rover will build upon the many discoveries that Curiosity has made over the years.

Related: Amazing Mars photos by NASA's Curiosity rover (latest images)

Curiosity launched in November 2011 and touched down inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater on the night of Aug. 5, 2012, kicking off a surface mission designed to last at least one Martian year (which is equivalent to 687 Earth days).

The main goal of Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission, officially known as Mars Science Laboratory, involves assessing whether Gale could ever have supported Earth-like life. The nuclear-powered robot has returned exciting news on this front, finding that the crater hosted a potentially habitable lake-and-stream system for long stretches in the ancient past, perhaps millions of years at a time.

Curiosity has also detected complex organic chemicals, the building blocks of life as know it, in Gale Crater rocks. In addition, the rover has rolled through several plumes of methane and discovered a seasonal pattern in the concentration of this gas, which here on Earth is primarily produced by living organisms. (Abiotic processes can generate methane as well, however, and the source of the stuff within Gale is unclear.)

In September 2014, Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the sky from Gale's center. For the past six years, the rover has been climbing through the mountain's foothills, reading the rocks for clues about Gale's past habitable environments and how Mars transitioned into the cold, dry desert planet we know today.

During its eight years on Mars, Curiosity has drilled 27 rock samples, scooped up six soil samples and put more than 14 miles (23 km) on its odometer, NASA officials said. (The Mars surface-distance record is held by another NASA rover, Opportunity, which covered 28.06 miles, or 45.16 km, between 2004 and 2018.)

Perseverance's $2.7 billion mission, called Mars 2020, aims to extend Curiosity's findings. The new rover will hunt for signs of ancient life in Mars' 28-mile-wide (45 km) Jezero Crater, which was home to a lake and a river delta long ago.

Perseverance will also collect and cache samples for future return to Earth and test out several new exploration technologies, including a tiny helicopter named Ingenuity and an instrument that generates oxygen from the thin, carbon dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere.

Mars 2020 is scheduled to touch down on Feb. 18, 2021. Maybe Curiosity will take a short break from its work in Gale Crater that day, look up at the Martian sky, and send well wishes to the new arrival.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Happy anniversary, Curiosity! NASA rover marks 8 years on Mars - Space.com

(TNS) San Antonio is in the hunt to be the new home of U.S. Space Command.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg said Wednesday the city has survived the initial cut as the Air Force seeks a headquarters for the command, which is now in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Governors from 26 states nominated cities to host the command, which is part of U.S. Space Force.

Nirenberg, who said he learned of the development last weekend, didnt know how many cities were originally in the contest or how many had made the cut, but he said Houston and Fort Worth also had been nominated by Gov. Greg Abbott.

He said San Antonio was a natural fit for the command because of its quality of life, highly skilled work force that includes military personnel transitioning to civilian life, large veterans community, and specialists who work in space-related fields.

We have the largest presence of cyber and intelligence capabilities outside of the national capital region, Nirenberg said. And we have a public-private military and civilian infrastructure thats required, including medical and military support networks, housing, transportation and veteran services, as well as electric, water, gas and telecommunications that are all critically important. And not to mention the proximity to our key allies in North America and the presence of significant private space flight technology thats underway.

Space Force was established in December and is the space warfare branch of the armed forces. One of eight uniformed services, it was created with the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act and will be stood up over the next 18 months.

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said Wednesday a release announcing criteria for cities seeking to host Space Command was sent out May 15. She said the Air Force had entered the evaluation phase of the selection process and that it would select candidates in mid- to late- November.

A decision is expected in January.

We expect to select the preferred location in January 2021, Stefanek said. Colorado Springs, Colorado, remains the location for the provisional headquarters for U.S. Space Command headquarters until a permanent headquarters location is selected and facilities are ready in approximately six years.

Space Force headquarters is in the Pentagon, as is the case for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, with Peterson AFB in Colorado Springs serving as the provisional home of the command as the search continues.

San Antonio is already home to several major commands. They include the Air Education and Training Command at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, and Army North, Army South, and the Armys Installation Management Command, all at JBSA-Fort Sam Houston.

2020 the San Antonio Express-News, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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San Antonio Vies to Be Home of New U.S. Space Command - GovTech