File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaverals Complex 40 launch pad. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX teams across the United States are readying for what the companys chief operating officer predicts will be a record number of launches in 2020.

Before the end of January, SpaceX aims to perform four Falcon 9 launches from Floridas Space Coast three for the companys Starlink broadband network, and a crucial in-flight abort test for the Crew Dragon spacecraft no earlier than Jan. 11.

SpaceX has performed its final launch of 2019, finishing the year with 13 missions 11 using the single-stick Falcon 9 and two employing the Falcon Heavy with three booster core connected together. All 13 of the missions were successful.

The company accomplished 21 launches in 2018, and 18 in 2017.

That adds up to 52 successful missions in a row one of the longest-running success streaks in the global launch industry since a Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral during final preparations for a pre-flight test-firing in September 2016, damaging the launch complex and destroying an Israeli communications satellite.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceXs president and chief operating officer, said the company is poised to launch a lot more rockets next year.

I think in 2020 well do more, and thats because of Starlink, she said in a roundtable discussion with reporters earlier this month. I think we will have 14 or 15 non-Starlink launches, and then well fly Starlink as often as we can.

I need second stages to be built a little bit faster, but we would probably shoot for 35 to 38 missions next year, Shotwell said.

Every Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch needs a new second stage produced at SpaceXs factory in Hawthorne, California. But many of SpaceXs launches utilize reused first stage boosters. That eases pressure on production teams, SpaceX officials said.

The company says it plans to build around 10 new Falcon 9 first stages in Hawthorne next year. Thats down from around 16 to 18 new first stages that SpaceX manufactured a couple of years ago. The reduction in the booster build rate has allowed SpaceX to reassign engineers and technicians to other roles within the company, officials said.

The Crew Dragons abort test in January will utilize a Falcon 9 rocket launched from pad 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center. Around a minute-and-a-half after launch, the Falcon 9s Merlin first stage engines will shut down, and the Crew Dragon capsule will fire its SuperDraco abort thrusters to fire away from the top of the launch vehicle.

The high-altitude escape exercise will prove the capsules ability to safely carry its astronaut passengers away from an in-flight rocket failure before NASA clears the Crew Dragon to carry humans later in 2020. The Crew Dragon will parachute to a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean off Floridas east coast, where SpaceX teams will retrieve it and return it to port.

NASA is paying SpaceX more than $3 billion to develop, build and fly Crew Dragon spaceships to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station.

The in-flight abort test was previously scheduled for late December, then Jan. 4. The new target launch date of Jan. 11 is pending approval from the U.S. Air Forces Eastern Range, according to NASA.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft SpaceX is preparing for the high-altitude abort test completed a series of engine hotfire tests on a stand at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in November. The test-firings verified SpaceXs fix for a valve issue that caused the explosion of a Crew Dragon capsule during a similar hotfire test in April.

Shotwell estimated the explosion of the Crew Dragon capsule in April alone caused three to four months of delay in SpaceXs commercial crew program.

Up to 180 Starlink satellites will be launched on the next three Falcon 9 missions dedicated to building out a fleet orbiting relay stations for SpaceXs planned global Internet service.

The next launch, scheduled for Jan. 3 at approximately 10:20 p.m. EST (0320 GMT on Jan. 4) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Stations Complex 40 launch pad, will add around 60 satellites to the 120 spacecraft SpaceX has shot into orbit on two previous Falcon 9 missions in May and in November.

SpaceX plans to operate the initial block of 1,584 Starlink satellites in orbits 341 miles (550 kilometers) above Earth. The company, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission to eventually field a fleet of up to 12,000 small Starlink broadband stations.

SpaceX confirmed Thursday that it plans a Falcon 9/Starlink launch in late January from pad 40. The update followed similar announcements from SpaceX on the schedule for two preceding Starlink missions in late December and mid-January, both also from Complex 40.

The late December launch has been delayed to Jan. 3.

Shotwell had predicted SpaceX would perform more than 13 launches in 2019, but some of the missions were delayed.

I think the only ones we delayed are a couple of Starlinks, and then crew, Shotwell said. For the first time, were waiting for our customers, which is a much happier place for us to be.

Shotwells forecast of SpaceXs 2020 launch manifest presumes the company can launch a Starlink mission as often as twice per month, each with up to 60 satellites.

Production on Starlink is going really well, she said earlier this month in a meeting with reporters at SpaceXs headquarters in Hawthorne, California. I think the next flight (set) was shipped to the Cape. We build roughly seven satellites Starting into the new year, you should see a mission every two-to-three weeks from us. We will hold a Starlink mission for a customer launch. But that should be roughly the cadence.

The flat-panel Starlink satellites, built at a SpaceX facility in Redmond, Washington, fill the volume of the Falcon 9s payload fairing. Each satellite weighs around 573 pounds, or 260 kilograms, and the Starlink craft stacked together form the heaviest payload SpaceX has ever launched.

Highlights of SpaceXs planned 2020 launch schedule include the Crew Dragons first mission with astronauts, scheduled as soon as the first quarter of the year. NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will fly aboard the Crew Dragon to the International Space Station after launching on a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

In late 2020, SpaceX plans to launch its fourth Falcon Heavy rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center with a U.S. Air Force payload. For that mission, designated AFSPC-44, the Falcon Heavy will target a high-altitude circular geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) above Earth.

SpaceX also plans to launch two Dragon cargo missions from Cape Canaveral to the space station in 2020 in March and August and two Air Force GPS navigation satellites are slated to ride Falcon 9 rockets into orbit from Floridas Space Coast in March and July.

An Argentinian radar observation satellite named SAOCOM 1B is scheduled for launch in March from Cape Canaveral on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. That mission, targeting a polar sun-synchronous orbit, was moved from Vandenberg Air Force Base and will be the first polar orbit launch from Florida since 1960.

SpaceX launches at Vandenberg will resume in November 2020, when a joint U.S.-European oceanography satellite named Sentinel 6A will lift off from the California launch base on a Falcon 9 rocket.

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SpaceX poised to accelerate launch cadence with series of Starlink missions - Spaceflight Now

Last Thursday, NASA confirmed that The Boeing Company had completed readiness reviews for a December 20, 2019 launch of its uncrewed Orbital Flight Test (OFT) to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch will be the first flight of Boeings CST-100 Starliner vehicle developed under NASAs Commercial Crew Program, and the second flight overall for the Commercial Crew Program following SpaceXs uncrewed Dragon 2 launch in March. Pending a successful OFT mission, Boeing plans to launch a crewed mission aboard its Starliner spacecraft early next year. Similarly, SpaceX plans to launch crew to the ISS using its Dragon 2 spacecraft in the near future, pending a successful In-Flight Abort Test in January.

For years, the industry has eagerly awaited SpaceX and Boeings first crewed launches. The last space vehicle to receive human-rating certification was NASAs Space Shuttle in 1981. Since then, space agencies and private companies around the globe have poured significant financial and human capital into developing new crew vehicles, but none of these efforts has yet resulted a crewed mission.

As the year draws to a close, spacecraft manufacturers have begun looking towards 2020 for their next chance to launch humans into space. Below is a peek at what we can expect from the industry next year.

1. Crewed launches from both NASA Commercial Crew Program providers

NASA introduced to the world on Aug. 3, 2018, the first U.S. astronauts who will fly on ... [+] American-made, commercial spacecraft to and from the International Space Station an endeavor that will return astronaut launches to U.S. soil for the first time since the space shuttles retirement in 2011. The agency assigned nine astronauts to crew the first test flight and mission of both Boeings CST-100 Starliner and SpaceXs Crew Dragon. The astronauts are, from left to right: Sunita Williams, Josh Cassada, Eric Boe, Nicole Mann, Christopher Ferguson, Douglas Hurley, Robert Behnken, Michael Hopkins and Victor Glover.

NASAs Commercial Crew Program (CCP) has provided funding to U.S.-based private companies to develop orbital human spaceflight capabilities since the first phase of program awards (Commercial Crew Development 1, or CCDev 1) in 2010. The program was created in order to reduce U.S. reliance on Russia for human spaceflight capabilities after the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. Since 2011, NASA has paid Russia approximately $86 million per seat to launch astronauts to the ISS aboard its Soyuz spacecraft.

After supporting 6 companies through the initial development and proposal phases of the program, NASA ultimately selected Boeing and SpaceX for Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts in 2014. The multibillion dollar CCtCap contract provides funding for each provider to complete an uncrewed mission to the ISS, verify its vehicles in-flight abort capabilities, and finally complete a crewed demonstration mission during which two NASA astronauts are successfully ferried to and from the ISS.

Though the program has experienced the delays common to human spaceflight development, it had a productive year in 2019, with one uncrewed test flight complete and another on the books for this month. While the program has not publicly released specific launch dates for its crewed flights, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has expressed confidence that the providers will launch crew in the first half of 2020.

Boeings CST-100 Starliner

Boeing's first CST-100 Starliner spacecraft sits atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on pad ... [+] 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on December 4, 2019 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Starliner crew capsule, designed to carry as many as seven astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), is scheduled to make its first unmanned test flight to the ISS on December 19. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Boeings CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to launch its OFT mission to the ISS aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on December 20. According to NASAs press release, the spacecraft will dock to the ISS on December 21 and will remain attached for approximately a week. On December 28, the spacecraft will undock from the ISS and re-enter the Earths atmosphere before performing a parachute and airbag-assisted landing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The OFT launch comes on the heels of the Starliner Pad Abort Test, which the company successfully completed at the beginning of November. Boeing previously experienced a setback when during a 2018 attempt of the test, a propellant leak occurred during engine shutdown. Based on the results of the subsequent anomaly investigation, Boeing implemented an operational control to prevent the leakage from re-occurring.

Since Boeing has chosen to verify its vehicles in-flight abort capabilities via analysis rather than test, the OFT mission is intended to be the vehicles final flight test before it launches crew early next year. The vehicles crewed flight test (CFT) will provide ISS transportation for 3 crew: NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Edward Mike Fincke, along with Boeing Commercial Crew Director and former NASA astronaut Christopher Ferguson. Upon successful execution of the mission, Ferguson could become the first individual in history to travel to the ISS in both a government and commercial capacity.

SpaceXs Crewed Dragon 2 Spacecraft

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft which is designed to carry people and cargo to orbiting destinations ... [+] such as space stations, is displayed at the SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles on July 21, 2019. (Photo by Mark RALSTON / AFP) (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

SpaceXs Dragon 2 vehicle (sometimes referred to as Crew Dragon) launched to the ISS for the first time this March, when it successfully completed an uncrewed 5 day mission before splashing down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. Shortly afterwards, the company experienced a setback when the same vehicle used for this mission exploded on a test stand in Cape Canaveral during a capsule static fire. SpaceX has since completed a full investigation of the anomaly, which traced the fault back to a leaky component that has since been replaced on its other capsules. A newly assembled capsule completed a successful static fire earlier this month, and the company remains on track for a January 2020 launch of its In-Flight Abort Test ahead of its crewed Demo-2 mission early next year.

SpaceXs Demo-2 mission will provide ISS transportation for NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, who have undergone training with the company at their Hawthorne, California headquarters for several years. Though the company has been given the option to transport a SpaceX employee or private passenger to the ISS on this test flight in addition to the two NASA astronauts, SpaceX has not publicly announced any plans to do so.

2. Crewed launches of commercial suborbital vehicles

Suborbital human spaceflight has captured the public imagination since the 1990s, when renewed interest from investors in space tourism began spurring development of affordable spaceflight options. For the low price of $100,000 to $1M USD, companies such as XCOR Aerospace, WorldView and Armadillo Aerospace promised private citizens a taste of the astronaut experience with short hops into space. Though the experience would last only a few hours and provide less than 10 minutes of weightlessness, the substantial price reduction from orbital tourism opportunities (which often cost upwards of $20M USD) gave hope to those who dreamt of bringing space exploration to the masses.

Unfortunately, launching humans into space is difficult, and many early players in the commercial suborbital market faced technical and financial setbacks that forced them to shut their doors. Over time, the competition has been whittled down to Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, who have emerged as the pack leaders with their New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo vehicles. While both companies have experienced repeated delays in their flight schedules, both have been completing successful test flights on a regular basis. As of fall 2019, executives from both companies have publicly stated that they expect crewed flight to occur within the next few months. If things continue to go as planned, 2020 could finally be their year.

Blue Origins New Shepard

Participants enjoy the Blue Origin Space Simulator during the Amazon Re:MARS conference on robotics ... [+] and artificial intelligence at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 5, 2019. (Photo by Mark RALSTON / AFP) (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

Blue Origins New Shepard suborbital rocket and capsule have been under development since at least 2006, when the programs first subscale demonstration vehicle first flew. Since April 2015, the fully integrated New Shepard system has visited space regularly, and on its second flight the rocket became the first in history to land vertically on Earth after visiting space.

Named after Alan Shepard, the first American man to visit space, New Shepard was intended from the start to be a crewed transportation system. However, to date, the vehicles flights have carried only cargo beyond the Karman line. As of December 2019, Blue Origin has completed 12 test flights of the vehicle, 9 of which have carried commercial payloads. Recent tests have also carried a dummy named Mannequin Skywalker, which is outfitted with sensors to measure how future commercial passengers could be affected by the flight.

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith has talked about the first crewed flight of New Shepard happening as early as 2018, but this date has repeatedly been pushed back. Smith has attributed these delays to the companys desire to be cautious and thorough, so as not to jeopardize passenger safety.

As of December 2019, the company has not publicly announced a date for the first crewed flight of the capsule, but founder Jeff Bezos has hinted that he expects it to occur in the near future. The first passengers on New Shepard are likely to be Blue Origin employees, and the company has stated that it will not begin taking deposits for commercial passenger flights until these initial crewed flights have occurred.

Virgin Galactics SpaceShipTwo

MOJAVE, CA - FEBRUARY 19, 2016 - Sir Richard Branson, center, poses with the employees for photos ... [+] by the new Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo at its roll out in the Mojave Desert, about a year and a half after Virgin's last rocket plane broke into pieces and killed the test pilot. (Photo by Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Virgin Galactics human spaceflight capabilities have technically been in development since 1996, when the Ansari XPRIZE was created to award $10M USD to a team who could launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice in two weeks. Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV), a joint venture between Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Burt Rutans Scaled Composites, ultimately won the prize with its SpaceShipOne reusable spaceplane design and White Knight launcher. Following the award, MAV signed a contract with Virgin Galactic to develop a suborbital spacecraft based on the XPRIZE-winning technology for space tourism. This deal resulted in the formation of The Spaceship Company, a joint venture between Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, to manufacture the spacecraft.

Since 2004, the team has been hard at work developing Virgin Galactics spaceplane and launcher, dubbed SpaceShipTwo and White Knight 2. A mockup of the design was revealed to the press in January 2008, with a company statement that the vehicle itself was around 60% complete at the time.

UNSPECIFIED - JANUARY 24: Virgin Galactic Flight Simulator in January 24th, 2008 - Test pilot Brian ... [+] Binnie in the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo flight simulator, which will take passengers a year to just over 100 km altitude; Virgin Galactic's first world is the spaceline owning an (Photo by Thierry BOCCON-GIBOD/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

As is often the case in human spaceflight, the vehicles development has not been without hiccups. In July 2007, an explosion occurred during a SpaceShipTwo oxidizer test at Mojave Air and Space Port, killing three employees and injuring three others with flying shrapnel. The company suffered an additional setback in October 2014 when a SpaceShipTwo vehicle broke up during a crewed test flight and crashed in the Mojave desert. The vehicles co-pilot was killed and the pilot was seriously injured. A subsequent inquiry by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the crash was caused by the co-pilots premature deployment of the spacecraft air brake device for atmospheric re-entry. The board also cited inadequate design safeguards against human error, poor pilot training and lack of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversight as contributors to the accident.

Since conclusion of the NTSB investigation in 2015, the SpaceShipTwo team has conducted 13 successful crewed test flights using its upgraded VSS Unity spaceship. These tests are in addition to the 54 successful test flights that occurred using the VSS Enterprise ship prior to its 2014 crash. Since the crash, Virgin Galactic has also taken over construction of the spacecraft from Scaled Composites, and has redesigned critical components in house to ensure passenger safety.

To date, more than 600 individuals have put down deposits for crewed tourist flights onboard SpaceShipTwo. The total price tag for a flight is $250,000 USD, and customers are asked to front half the ticket price to reserve their spot in advance. A specific launch date for the vehicles first commercial passenger flight has not been announced, but founder Sir Richard Branson said earlier this year that he hoped it would occur in months not years. In fall 2019, the company began its Astronaut Readiness Program, a preparatory course for customers that have reserved seats onboard one of the companys first passenger flights.

3. Steady launch cadence for Russias Soyuz

KYZYLORDA REGION, KAZAKHSTAN - JUNE 6, 2018: A Soyuz-FG rocket booster carrying the Soyuz MS-09 ... [+] spacecraft with the ISS Expedition 56/57 prime crew members, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst, Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev, and NASA astronaut Serena M. Aunon-Chancellor, aboard blasts off to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Sergei Savostyanov/TASS (Photo by Sergei SavostyanovTASS via Getty Images)

While NASAs Commercial Crew providers continue their work towards operational flights, Russias Soyuz vehicle retains its monopoly on crew transportation to the ISS. Launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Soyuz program has been transporting astronauts and cosmonauts into orbit since 1968. With a fatality rate of 1 in 63 people sent to orbit, Soyuz is thus far the safest human spaceflight system in history. (In contrast, the Space Shuttles fatality rate was approximately 1 in 56.)

As of December 2019, Soyuz Expeditions 62 and 63 are on the books for April and May 2020 launches, respectively. Each mission will ferry a crew of 3 astronauts between the Earth and ISS. While NASA hopes to reduce its dependence on the Russians for ISS transportation in the near future, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stated in October 2019 that the agency was looking into purchasing an additional Soyuz seat for fall 2020 or spring 2021 to protect for additional Commercial Crew delays. Although both Commercial Crew partners are expected to launch crew in early 2020, Bridenstine noted that when it comes to human spaceflight development, usually things dont go according to plan.

4. Chinas Shenzhou 12 mission and Tiangong Space Station

BEIJING, Oct. 19, 2016 -- Photo taken on Oct. 19, 2016 shows the screen at the Beijing Aerospace ... [+] Control Center showing a simulated picture of an automated docking between the Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft and the orbiting space lab Tiangong-2. The Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft successfully completed its automated docking with the orbiting Tiangong-2 space lab Wednesday morning, according to Beijing Aerospace Control Center. (Xinhua/Ju Zhenhua via Getty Images)

As of 2019, China is the only nation with human spaceflight capabilities that is not a member of the ISS program. The Chinese manned spaceflight initiative, called the Shenzhou program, successfully sent its first crew member into orbit in October 2003. Since then, the country has successfully completed 5 other crewed missions using its Shenzhou spacecraft and Long March rocket.

The last of these 5 missions - Shenzhou 11 - was launched in October 2016. After a 4 year hiatus, China plans to send its next crew up in 2020. As China does not participate in the ISS, the country plans to create its own Tiangong Space Station, which will be constructed, owned, and operated solely by the Chinese government. Tiangong is expected to have an orbital lifetime of at least 10 years and to be able to accommodate 3 to 6 astronauts at a time, making it a project of similar scale to the ISS. The Chinese government has stated that it aims to complete construction of the station by 2022.

Looking beyond 2020, the rest of the decade appears rife with opportunity for both the commercial space industry and for government programs with deeper space ambitions. NASAs Artemis program aims to send the first woman and next man to the Moon by 2024. The program has yet to announce a launch date for its uncrewed Artemis 1 test flight, but earlier this month, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stated that he believed it would be sometime in 2021 based on the current Space Launch System (SLS) development schedule.

A model of the SLS rocket on display during the 35th Space Symposium at The Broadmoor in Colorado ... [+] Springs, Colorado on April 9, 2019. - NASA is preparing to use the SLS rocket to send US astronauts to the moon in 2024. The four day symposium is the largest space trade show in the world, attracting leaders focusing on space technology, satellite development, rocket design, and space policy. (Photo by Jason Connolly / AFP) (Photo credit should read JASON CONNOLLY/AFP via Getty Images)

SpaceX, in turn, looks to continue pushing the boundaries by exploring destinations beyond the ISS. The companys #dearMoon project, which is scheduled for launch no earlier than 2023, aims to send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to orbit the Moon in a SpaceX Starship vehicle along with a crew of several artists. In addition to advancing human spaceflight, one of the projects major goals is to inspire the creation of new art to promote peace across the world. Initial tests of the Starship system have commenced in Boca Chica, Texas, using subscale models of the spacecraft.

SpaceX Starship design as of September 2018, at the unveiling of the #dearMoon mission.

The successful certification and operation of any of the aforementioned vehicles will be a huge milestone, both for the space industry and for humanity as a whole. If the 2010s were the decade of SpaceX, perhaps the 2020s will be the decade where space tourism finally becomes a reality. With a little luck, it could even be the decade where humans once again venture beyond low-Earth orbit.

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Human Spaceflight In 2020: What Lies Ahead - Forbes

Science fiction has long been the domain of fanciful imagination, particularly as it pertains to movies set in space. A significant portion of space-faring sci-fi asks the viewer to imagine what life might be like in the distant future, or with the benefit of incredible, as-yet-undeveloped, technology. Or else it asks us to imagine first contact with an alien civilization. Spoilers: it usually doesnt turn out well.

Ad Astra, directed by James Gray and starring Brad Pitt, does something a little different, though not wholly unheard of. It imagines a world just a few decades off, one which appears, for the most part, as a reasonable facsimile of what space travel of the future might actually be like and not too far into the future, either.

**Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers for Ad Astra below**

Ad Astra isnt without its own flights of fancy. There are Moon pirates, the pursuit of alien contact, and at least a couple of middle fingers cast lovingly toward the law of physics. But for the most part, and despite most of it taking place off-world, it feels grounded. There isnt any time travel, no cryogenic pods, and no warp drive. Space travel, as portrayed in the film is arduous, slow, and, at times, lonely.

Ahead of Ad Astra's home release, SYFY WIRE traveled to the deserts of New Mexico (almost an alien planet in its own right) to visit Spaceport America, talk with astronauts, NASA engineers, and commercial space travel experts, about the film, the role of science fiction, and the future of space travel, which has become the next frontier in human transport.

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT

Roy McBride (Pitt) works as an astronaut on the International Space Antenna, a massive piece of engineering designed in hopes of communicating with non-human intelligences elsewhere in the universe. When a dangerous burst of energy from the far reaches of the solar system destroy the antenna, McBride barely survives a vertigo-inducing freefall from terrifying heights.

Once back on the surface, Roy embarks on a mission to save the world from a potentially catastrophic event that threatens all life on Earth. The explosions on the antenna were only the beginning, the hint of a far greater cosmic threat, originating near Neptune.

Getting to the far reaches of the solar system will take several crafts and a layover on Mars, but first he has to get to the Moon. And in order to do that, he has to ride coach, so to speak.

Rather than take a government-operated craft to the Moon, McBride flies Virgin Atlantic. Its an interesting story choice and one which does a lot of world-building without having to say too much. Commercial spaceflight, in the world of Ad Astra, is mundane. Common. There are flight attendants and (expensive) onboard amenities. Space is no longer the domain of the few, dominated by world governments and those chosen few. Instead, its available to anyone and everyone. At least everyone willing and able to shell out the cash.

Science fiction often hand waves the technology needed to accomplish large-scale travel to, and extended living in, space. The service Ad Astra, and movies like it, provide is to present at least one possible way forward. And thats important.

One of the biggest missions of science fiction in general, whether its movies or novels, is to tell us what is possible, or what could be possible, and give us some optimism that we can get to that point, said Robert Yowell, former NASA Engineer and technical adviser for Ad Astra.

Private companies have been pursuing commercial spaceflight for decades. At least since the 70s, designs have been floating around which intended to carry dozens of people off-world. These plans never materialized.

From a certain point of view, consumer spaceflight is already happening. In 1984 and 85, Charles Walker became the first non-government individual to go to space. He flew a total of three shuttle missions on behalf of his employer, McDonnel Douglas Co, who paid NASA $40,000 per flight.

In 1990, Toyohiro Akiyama flew to MIR, on behalf of the Tokyo Broadcasting System. The total cost is in dispute but ranges in the tens of millions.

As of earlier this year, NASA has opened the International Space Station to commercial enterprises. In addition to commercial research, the ISS is being opened up to commercial astronaut missions. According to the announcement, there will be two slots for commercial astronauts each year, beginning as early as 2020. These missions will be short-term, up to 30 days, and will be privately funded, dedicated commercial flights.

This would mark a considerable shift in the culture of spaceflight, effectively beginning a new era of regular non-government human activities in space.

While commercial flights to the ISS would open the door to space for private citizens, several companies arent content to wait for permission. In fact, Virgin, the company which ferried Roy McBride to the Moon, is making moves to get there itself.

Virgin Galactic, the spaceflight arm of the Virgin Group, is developing its own planes intended for commercial spaceflight. The original intent was to have flights in progress by 2009, but the project encountered a few setbacks, not unheard of in this arena.

Still, earlier this year, two of Virgins test pilots were awarded astronaut wings by the U.S. Department of Transportation after a successful flight to 51.4 miles above Earths surface, surpassing the 50-mile benchmark recognized by the department.

Virgin Galactic is currently operating out of Spaceport America, in New Mexico. The site serves as the first purpose-built commercial spaceport in the world. Sitting on 18,000 acres, the spaceport offers a rocket launchpad, hangers for holding spacecraft, and an impressive runway built with landing space planes in mind.

Once Virgins commercial operations get off the ground, the primary focus will be tourism. The company will offer suborbital flights for a fee, but thats just the beginning. While initial flights will take off and land at the same location, the ultimate goal is point-to-point flights to different locations around the world. This would require considerably more spaceports in varying locations, but could revolutionize travel. At least for those who can afford it.

Because these flights would be happening at such high altitudes and traveling at such incredible speeds, travel times would be drastically reduced. These sorts of point-to-point spaceflights could deliver a passenger from L.A. to Hong Kong in two hours.

Daniel Hicks, CEO of Spaceport America, however, holds a grander view of what theyre trying to do. Yes, they are trying to accomplish the decades-old dream of spaceflight for the common person, but it isnt just about making money.

We are at a precipice now, where exploration by sailing ship was in the fourteenth century. If you look at the timeline between Columbus and Sir Francis Drake, it was hundreds of years. Because there was no economic reason to do it. Now were at a point where people understand there is money to be made in space. And thats going to open up the doors to exploration to allow flights to Mars, etc. NASA was the genesis for all of this and NASA should never go away. But commercialization is really what the world has been waiting for the past few decades, Hicks said.

Theres good reason to believe Hicks might be right. During a panel on the future of spaceflight, at Spaceport America, each of the panelists, Robert Yowell, Ellen Ochoa, Leland Melvin, and Daniel Hicks spoke of witnessing Apollo 11 and the way it influenced them, in ways they might not have understood at the time, to ultimately pursue paths which lead them into space. And in the case of Melvin and Ochoa, into space itself.

While activities in space, both crewed and uncrewed, have continued since Apollo weve been missing that spark of excitement for some time, the electric anticipation and sense of victory over nature and over our own limitations, which will inspire the next generation of explorers.

Maybe the proliferation of commercial space travel, is just the thing we need to get todays kids excited about pushing into that final frontier.

When asked about what was exciting in space travel today, Melvin said, One of the most exciting things is you can have a panel like this and have a discussion with a Hispanic woman and an African American male astronaut on the panel. The representation in movies and in real life, in space, is helping everyone feel like they have a seat a the table to be part of this journey.

While the pioneering work by NASA and other space agencies around the world is immeasurable, moving space into the private sector and making it available to everyone, is the next logical step opening up the possibility for everyone to be part of the journey.

Its reasonable to expect continued delays, not just from Virgin Galactic, but from all commercial spaceflight endeavors. Traveling in space is a dangerous undertaking, one which requires considerable caution. This is one area in which its better to be right than it is to be fast.

With any luck, companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Horizons, and SpaceX will realize the dream of extending human spaceflight to humanity, at large, in the coming decades. Until then, weve got our dreams and our stories. But we might want to rethink building an Applebee's on the Moon.

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Will commercial space flight be like Ad Astra? We went to a flight base to check it out - SYFY WIRE

Follow the key events of the Soyuz ST-A rockets ascent into orbit from the Guiana Space Center with the first COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation, or CSG 1, radar observation satellite, the European Space Agencys CHEOPS exoplanet telescope, and three CubeSats.

A listing of exact times for the flights major events is posted below.

Data source: Arianespace

T-0:00:03: Engines at Full Thrust

T+0:00:00: Liftoff

T+0:01:57: Jettison Boosters

T+0:03:16: Jettison Fairing

T+0:04:47: Core Stage Separation

T+0:08:49: Soyuz/Fregat Separation

T+0:09:49: First Fregat Ignition

T+0:20:13: First FregatShutdown

T+0:22:43: CSG 1 Separation

T+1:00:55:Second Fregat Ignition

T+1:41:40: APAS-S Separation

T+1:52:35: Third Fregat Ignition

T+2:20:55: Fourth Fregat Ignition

T+2:24:41: CHEOPS Separation

T+3:29:15: Fifth Fregat Ignition

T+4:02:35: Sixth Fregat Ignition

T+4:10:44: BeginSeparation of CubeSats

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Timeline of Soyuz launch with CSG 1 and CHEOPS - Spaceflight Now

SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral at 9:56 a.m. EST (1456 GMT) Monday. Credit: Steven Young/Spaceflight Now

Sixty upgraded satellites for SpaceXs Starlink broadband network rocketed into orbit Monday from Floridas Space Coast, debuting performance enhancements and notching new firsts in SpaceXs list of rocket reuse accomplishments.

SpaceXs second batch of Starlink satellites joined 60 previous broadband-beaming spacecraft in orbit after deployment from a Falcon 9 rocket Monday, adding to a network that may eventually include thousands of satellites broadcasting high-speed Internet signals from space.

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 climbed away from Cape Canaverals Complex 40 launch pad at 9:56 a.m. EST (1456 GMT), turned toward the northeast and soared through scattered clouds on a gorgeous Veterans Day morning.

Nine kerosene-fueled Merlin 1D engines powered the Falcon 9 with 1.7 million pounds of thrust, sending the rocket into the sky with a thundering sendoff. It was the first launch to take off from a Cape Canaveral launch pad since Aug. 22, and SpaceXs first satellite launch since Aug. 6.

The Falcon 9s first stage shut down and detached from the rockets second stage around two-and-a-half minutes into the flight. Moments later, the Falcon 9s second stage lit its single Merlin powerplant to propel itself into orbit with the Starlink payloads, then the rockets nose cone opened and fell away, revealing the Starlink satellites after transiting through the thick, lower layers of the atmosphere.

The first stage booster returned to a propulsive landing on SpaceXs drone ship Of Course I Still Love You holding position around 400 miles (250 kilometers) downrange from Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean, roughly due east of Charleston, South Carolina. The rocket completed its fourth mission, following three previous launches and landings two last year, and one in February that helped loft into space an Indonesian communications satellite and the Israeli Beresheet moon lander.

Mondays launch was the first time SpaceX flew a Falcon 9 booster on a fourth mission. It also marked another first for SpaceX, which demonstrated its capability to reuse a payload fairing recovered from a previous launch.

The bulbous payload shroud protects satellites during the first few minutes of flight, then drops away from the rocket in two halves. The fairing halves flown Monday originally launched on a Falcon Heavy mission April 11, then parachuted into the Atlantic Ocean, where SpaceX teams pulled them from the sea for inspections, refurbishment and reuse.

SpaceX planned to attempt to catch both fairing halves with two specially-outfitted boats Monday. But managers ordered the ships to port due to concerns about rough seas.

SpaceX now has two fairing recovery ships in its fleet, both equipped with giant nets to catch composite fairing halves as they gently fall to the sea under parachutes. The fairings also carry cold gas thrusters to control their descent.

On previous missions, SpaceX has tried to catch one fairing half using a single boat. The company successfully caught one piece of the fairing for the first time after a July 25 launch of a Falcon Heavy rocket.

Pursuing the prime objective of Mondays mission, the Falcon 9s second stage engine switched off about nine minutes after launch, and the rocket coasted over Europe and the Middle East before reigniting its engine at around 10:41 a.m. EST (1541 GMT) to circularize its orbit. The Falcon 9 aimed for an altitude of around 174 miles (280 kilometers) for deployment of the Starlink satellites, and a member of SpaceXs launch team confirmed the rocket achieved an on-target orbit.

The Falcon 9 sent commands at 10:56 a.m. EST (1546 GMT) to release retention pins holding the Starlink satellites to the launcher, and live video from a camera on-board the rocket showed the 60 flat-panel spacecraft receding in the blackness of space.

The satellites, but at a SpaceX facility in Redmond, Washington, are designed to gradually disperse over the coming hours and days. Ion thrusters fed by krypton fuel will maneuver the satellites into operational 341-mile-high (550-kilometer) orbits inclined 53 degrees to the equator.

SpaceX says 1,440 of the satellites are needed to provide Internet service over the populated world, a service level the company says could be achieved after 24 launches.

The Starlink network could offer service for northern parts of the United States and Canada after six launches, according to SpaceX.

SpaceX could launch thousands more Starlink satellites if merited by market demand. The Federal Communications Commission has authorized SpaceX to operate nearly 12,000 Starlink satellites broadcasting inKu-band, Ka-band and V-band frequencies, with groups of spacecraft positioned at different altitudes and in various planes in low Earth orbit.

Documents filed with the International Telecommunication Union last month suggested SpaceX could add another 30,000 Starlink satellites to the network, growing its total size to 42,000 spacecraft.

The Starlink network is rapidly becoming a core business area for SpaceX, which is competing with companies like OneWeb and Amazons Project Kuiper to deploy fleets of thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit to beam broadband Internet signals from space to users around the world.

Developers of the so-called mega-constellations in low Earth orbit say their networks offer key advantages over traditional satellite Internet architectures, which relay on satellites in higher orbits, where radio transmissions even traveling at the speed of light take longer to reach.

SpaceX has launched more satellites than either of its chief competitors Amazon has not yet launched any and the spacecraft that lifted off Monday will introduce new capabilities to the Starlink network.

Since the most recent launch of Starlink satellites in May, SpaceX has increased spectrum capacity for the end user through upgrades in design that maximize the use of both Ka- and Ku-bands, SpaceX wrote in a press kit for Mondays launch. Additionally, components of each satellite are 100% demisable and will quickly burn up in Earths atmosphere at the end of their life cycle a measure that exceeds all current safety standards.

SpaceX said the new Starlink spacecraft design can provide a 400 percent increase in data throughout per satellite, and each satellite carries double the number of steerable phased array broadband beams than on earlier Starlink platforms.

The first 60 Starlink satellites, which launched May 23, carried only Ku-band antennas. At the time, SpaceX said 95 percent of the materials in each of the first 60 satellites would burn up in the atmosphere after their missions were complete.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceXs president and chief operating officer, said last month that the company plans to begin launching Starlink spacecraft equipped with inter-satellite laser crosslinks some time mid-to-late next year.

Three of the 60 satellites launched in May have stopped communicating with ground controllers, but SpaceX officials say they are pleased with the overall performance of the initial block of Starlink spacecraft.

The U.S. Air Force is testing Internet connections between aircraft and SpaceXs Starlink satellites to evaluate the networks suitability for future military use, and Elon Musk, SpaceXs founder and CEO, said he sent a tweet last month through a Starlink satellite.

We still have ways to go from tweets to 4K cat videos, but we are on our way, joked Lauren Lyons, a SpaceX engineer who hosted the companys webcast of Mondays launch.

Skywatchers with clear skies at twilight could see the Starlink satellites passing overhead in a train-like formation after Mondays launch, similar to observations of the first 60 satellites following their launch in May.

The satellites reflected more sunlight than expected, creating a shimmering spectacle and sometimes flaring to be as bright as the brightest stars in the sky. The satellites appeared to dim over time, and observations became less frequent as they spread out in their orbital plane.

The bright satellites drew the ire of many astronomers, who worried the addition of thousands of similarly-bright satellites could interfere with scientific observations using ground-based telescopes.

The Royal Astronomical Society said in June that the large number of broadband satellites proposed by SpaceX, Amazon, OneWeb and Telesat presents a challenge to ground-based astronomy.

The deployed networks could make it much harder to obtain images of the sky without the streaks associated with satellites, and thus compromise astronomical research, the society said in a statement.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, funded by the National Science Foundation, said in May it was working with SpaceX to jointly analyze and minimize any potential impacts on astronomical observations caused by radio transmissions coming from the Starlink satellites.

These discussions have been fruitful and are providing valuable guidelines that could be considered by other such systems as well, the NRAO said in a statement. To date, SpaceX has demonstrated their respect for our concerns and their support for astronomy.

The NRAO said it continued to monitor, analyze and discuss the evolving parameters of the Starlink system. The NRAO identified several proposals under consideration, including exclusion zones and other mitigations around the National Science Foundations current and future radio astronomy facilities.

SpaceX says it is actively working with leading astronomy groups from around the world to make sure their work is not affected by the Starlink satellites. Engineers are taking steps to make the base of future Starlink satellites black to help mitigate impacts on the astronomy community, SpaceX said.

But SpaceX says satellites launched Monday do not incorporate the change.

SpaceX says it will adjust Starlink orbits should it be necessary for extremely sensitive space science observations, and the company has touted the ability of its next-generation Starship vehicle to send giant astronomical telescopes into space.

We have also proactively reached out to leading astronomy groups from around the world to discuss the Starlink mission profile, scientifically assess the impacts on astronomy activities and evaluate any helpful mitigations moving forward, a SpaceX official said.

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Successful launch continues deployment of SpaceX's Starlink network - Spaceflight Now

Lifting OffFlying into space is a coveted job. That demand means companies are able to choose the most qualified pilots. And top of that list for qualifications: hours in flight.

The more experience you have, the more likely you are to have encountered situations that are more challenging, says David Mackay, Chief Pilot for Virgin Galactic.

It only happened because I met Burt, and he saw that I built a plane accurately and it flew very well, Melvill recalls. He flew it himself and he then trained me himself to be a test pilot of his aircraft.

Melvill would go on to pilot Virgins SpaceShipOne, making the first commercial flight into space in 2004. But Melvills story is unique.

I dont know anyone else who went the path I went. No recollection of anybody who was lucky enough to get to do what I did, Melvill says.

Typically, test pilots receive their training through military branches, as Mackay did. On top of that, they spend countless days in flight simulators to prepare future commercial space pilots for all conceivable situations.

As we approach the flight day itself [the pilots] will be in the in the simulator every day, sometimes twice a day doing repeated profiles, Mackay says. In the airline industry, typically youre in the simulator every six months and were in it on a daily basis.

Its somewhat akin to going to a doctors office. The doctor informs you of all the known risks associated with the particular procedure or operation and once the patient has been informed of that, some documentation is signed and then the procedure proceeds, says Kelvin Coleman, the Federal Aviation Administrations Deputy Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation. We ensure that consultation is made, and that documentation is in place before those space flight participants and crew members can fly.

For commercial space pilots who have successfully completed an authorized flight into space defined in the U.S. as 50 miles above Earths surface where effects like weightlessness become apparent the Office of Commercial Space Transportation recognizes their achievements with Astronaut Wings. To date, seven commercial astronauts have received Astronaut Wings. Those flying under government programs, like NASA, are not eligible for Astronaut Wings.

Were in a test program and, you know, it makes complete sense to have test pilots working on an aircraft that is still in the test program, Mackay says. Maybe one day we dont need test pilots and on the other hand there are an awful lot of [pilots] who are really interested in doing this. And you know, why not get the most experienced and best-qualified pilots you possibly can?

Aside from flight experience and the ability to communicate clearly with a large team, a commercial space pilot also needs another crucial attribute: a passion for their job.

One of the most important things, of course, is that we want somebody who is highly motivated and really keen to see the project succeed. And a good team player, it takes a big team of people to make this work, Mackay says.

Excerpt from:

What it takes to be a space pilot - Astronomy Magazine

By Ruby Prosser Scully

Joseph Wu lab, Stanford University School of Medicine

Human heart cells are altered by spaceflight but return mostly to normal when back on Earth. The findings could help scientists understand why astronauts hearts change and how to prevent it.

Previous studies of astronauts have found that spaceflight reduces both heart rate and blood pressure and increases the amount of blood pumped by the heart. But most research on how this happens has been done either on animals or on whole human tissues or organs.

To gain further insights, Alexa Wnorowski at Stanford University in California and her colleagues performed experiments using human heart cells.

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First, they took blood from three people with no history of heart disease. They then reprogrammed some of the blood cells into stem cells that were then coaxed to form heart muscle cells.

Half of the heart muscle cells were put on a SpaceX spacecraft travelling to the International Space Station for a resupply mission. The other half were kept on Earth for comparison.

After five and a half weeks, the cells in orbit were returned to the ground and the scientists examined the effects of microgravity on them.

Read more: What happened when one twin went to space and the other stayed home?

The team found differences in the way that 3000 genes were expressed in these cells. The most notable changes were to genes responsible for metabolism and the functioning of mitochondria, which are the energy powerhouses of cells.

Around 1000 of these genes were still different after 10 days back on Earth, which is equivalent to roughly 4 to 5 per cent of all known human genes. But most of the genes responsible for the changes to the cells mitochondria and metabolism had returned to normal.

It isnt clear from this study what effects the changes might have on astronauts. A previous study looked at two people who were twins: one went to space for a year and the other remained on Earth. It found changes to genes associated with cell mitochondria and metabolism in blood cells in the twin who had been to space. These werent seen in the other twin.

This raises the possibility that spaceflight has similar effects on multiple cell types, including heart and blood cells, says Wnorowski. But its also not quite enough data to draw that large of a conclusion, she says.

The team plans to send 3D tissue structures with multiple different cells types on an upcoming trip to the International Space Station to see how they are affected.

Journal reference: Stem Cell Reports, DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2019.10.006

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Spaceflight alters heart cells but they quickly recover back on Earth - New Scientist News

At some point in the not-too-distant future, the global space industry will be worth $1.1 trillion -- maybe as much as $1.8 trillion -- according to the space analysts at investment bank Morgan Stanley.

And now there's a pure-play way to invest in that: Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE), shares of which began trading last week.

We first told you about space tourism company Virgin Galactic's plans to go public -- without actually doing an IPO -- back in July. Taking an unconventional route to the public markets, Virgin Galactic would first sell half its shares to publicly traded shelf-company Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings (SCH), then reverse-merge into SCH and label the entire combined company "Virgin Galactic."

Voila! Instant virtual IPO.

Now that Virgin Galactic is public and its shares have had a few days to trade around a bit, we thought you might like to know a bit more about "the world's first and only publicly traded commercial human spaceflight company" (their words, not mine).

Virgin Galactic shares jumped as much as 10% on the day of the name change, but ended the day right back where they began at $11.79 per share -- and it's been all downhill since. The day after "Virgin Galactic" became publicly tradable, shares lost 7% of their value... then 4% more the day after that... and 11% the day after that!

The good news is that by the end of the week, short-sellers apparently decided they had made enough money, and bought back some shares. But in the end, Virgin Galactic stock was down 18% in its first week of trading.

Hardly the result Sir Richard Branson -- or investors -- had hoped for.

Why are investors starting to sour on Virgin Galactic stock? Part of the reason may be that they've finally gotten a good, close look at its numbers. You see, the day after it began trading, Virgin Galactic filed an "8-K" report with the SEC, which included an "unaudited, pro forma, condensed" review of some of its financial information.

Among the revelations from this document: Virgin Galactic has almost no revenue -- but lots of losses.

Admittedly, coming from a company that has yet to make its first commercial spaceflight, this shouldn't be too surprising. But for investors with only a passing familiarity with Virgin Galactic's status, the numbers might have come as a bit of a shock.

Over the first six months of 2019, this company with an $1.8 billion market capitalization (that'sS&P Global Market Intelligence's latest estimate) has booked only $2.4 million in sales -- and racked up $96.4 million in net losses.

The good news is that for the time being at least, Virgin Galactic is in a good position to absorb these losses as it awaits its first commercial spaceflight (now expected to take place sometime in 2020).

Thanks largely to the cash that came with SCH's investment, Virgin Galactic now boasts a $536.6 million bank account, and no long-term debt. Almost all of its debts are short-term in nature, and the bulk of them ($81.1 million) consist of customer deposits -- obligations the company should quickly begin satisfying once it begins flying tourists to space commercially.

That's about it from the perspective of "dollars-and-cents" revelations from the report. No mention of free cash flow. No guidance for what to expect the numbers to look like going forward. (As I mentioned, Virgin gave us only an "unaudited, pro forma, and condensed" snapshot.) But one other revelation bears examination.

After the merger, Sir Richard Branson, in the form of "Vieco US," controls 58.8% of Virgin Galactic's shares. Shareholders of what used to be SCH own 40.2%. The remaining 1% of Virgin Galactic's shares, believe it or not, are now owned by Boeing (NYSE:BA) -- which, having its own space business, might ordinarily be considered a Virgin Galactic competitor! Boeing's venture arm HorizonX, you see, made a $20 million investment to take a 1% share in Virgin Galactic when it went public.

And this is interesting because it gives Boeing insight into the company. Boeing can use that to learn how good of a business space tourism might become without making investments of its own. It also gives Boeing insight into any advances Virgin Galactic might make in commercial air transport.

After all, beginning next year, and for years to follow, Virgin planes will be making regular flights at ultra-high altitudes and hypersonic velocity. In so doing, they're bound to learn interesting things about how passenger airplanes perform at very high speeds, in very thin atmospheres. Indeed, Virgin Galactic's CEO says this will be an "exciting part" of Virgin's business in future years. Over and above the excitement of flying into space, the path Virgin spacecraft take to get to space could blaze a new trail for intercontinental passenger transport, cutting travel times between Los Angeles and Tokyo from 11 hours ... to just two hours.

(Commenting on this aspect of the business earlier this year, investment bank UBS opined that while Virgin Galactic's primary reason for being -- space tourism -- might become a $3 billion industry a decade from now, hypersonic business travel could be worth as much as $20 billion annually.)

Unsurprisingly, this interests Boeing, too. Last month, Boeing HorizonX Ventures head Brian Schettler told CNBC that Boeing intends to use its Virgin Galactic investment "to explore" not just "commercial access to space," but also "high-speed mobility" of commercial airplanes as well.

As Virgin Galactic spins up its business and prepares to issue its first earnings report, investors might want to "explore" this aspect of Virgin Galactic's business model as well.

Excerpt from:

4 Things to Know About New Space Company Virgin Galactic - Motley Fool

Skywatchers around the world have the opportunity to witness a rare astronomical event Monday that occurs just 13 times each century.

Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system, is set to inch across the face of the sun in whats known as a transit, and several organizations are planning to broadcast the celestial event live online.

During the Mercury transit, the planet will pass between Earth and the sun, and while this chance alignment occurs, skywatchers here will be able to see Mercury appear as an inky black dot crossing the suns bright disk.

The planet Mercury is a very small, terrestrial planet, and its quite a bit closer to the sun than we are, so itll just be a tiny little black spot, said Patti Boyd, an astrophysicist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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The transit will begin Monday at 7:35 a.m. ET, and the entire event will last a little more than five hours. People on the East Coast of the United States, Central America and South America will be able to witness the entire transit because Mercury will start marching across the solar disk after the sun has already risen.

For the rest of North America and parts of Europe and Africa, sunrise will occur while the transit is already in progress, but skywatchers should still be able to catch part of the event, weather permitting. The transit of Mercury will not be visible in Australia and much of Asia, but enthusiasts can still catch all the action, thanks to almost real-time images from NASAs Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Slooh, an online observatory, is planning to livestream the event on YouTube, beginning at 7:30 a.m. ET. The Virtual Telescope Project, which collects images from remotely controlled telescopes around the world, will also broadcast the transit of Mercury online.

To watch the transit in person, do not look at the sun directly with the naked eye, including through binoculars or telescopes. Observing the sun without proper protection can lead to serious and permanent vision damage.

Rather, Boyd recommends using eclipse glasses, which are designed with certified solar filters to make viewing safe. But even with eclipse glasses, it will likely be difficult to spot Mercury.

The dot will be very small, she said. Even for people with perfect vision, itll be a stretch to make out the faint, circular dot crossing the face of the sun.

From Earth, its only possible to see transits of Mercury and Venus. Though a Mercury transit will occur again in 2032, the next one that will be visible from the continental United States is in 2049.

Transits of Venus are even more rare; the last one occurred in 2012, and the next one wont take place until 2117.

Denise Chow is a reporter and editor at NBC News MACH.

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Mercury is making a rare 'transit' across the sun. Here's how to watch. - NBCNews.com

Rocket Lab's 10th launch will be memorable in multiple ways.

We already knew that the company's Electron rocket will take some big strides toward reusability on the upcoming mission, which is scheduled to lift off from New Zealand on Nov. 25. And we just learned that Electron will loft seven satellites on this flight, including a small Japanese craft designed to create artificial meteor showers.

The shooting-star satellite, known as ALE-2, was built by Tokyo-based company Astro Live Experiences as part of its "Sky Canvas" project. ALE-2 is 24 inches long by 24 inches wide by 31 inches tall (60 by 60 by 80 centimeters), weighs 165 lbs. (75 kilograms) and is packed with 400 0.4-inch (1 centimeter) spheres that are designed to burn up high in Earth's atmosphere, creating a gorgeous sky show.

Related: Rocket Lab and Its Electron Booster (Photos)

"With this launch, we are a step closer to realiz[ing] the man-made shooting star," Astro Live Experiences CEO Lena Okajima said in a statement. "Please look forward to the world's first demonstration we are aiming [for] in 2020, which will be a major milestone for ALE."

As its name suggests, ALE-2 is the Japanese company's second such satellite. The first, ALE-1, launched this January aboard a Japanese Epsilon rocket and is also scheduled to deploy its colorful sky pellets sometime in 2020, after some on-orbit tests, company representatives have said.

The artificial meteors will travel more slowly through Earth's sky than real ones and will thus remain visible longer 3 to 10 seconds, ALE representatives have said. The pellets are designed to burn up completely between 37 and 50 miles (60 to 80 kilometers) above Earth's surface and therefore will pose no threat to people on the ground or planes in the air, according to a company FAQ.

ALE envisions creating artificial showers for big events, such as the opening ceremony of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The "shooting stars" should be visible to people across a region about 125 miles (200 km) wide, company representatives have said.

A look at the ALE-2 satellite designed to create artificial meteor showers from orbit.

(Image credit: ALE)

An artist's illustration of ALE's ALE-2 "shooting star" satellite.

(Image credit: Business Wire)

The other six satellites going up on the Electron later this month are ATL-1, a Hungarian craft that will test a new thermal isolation material; FossaSat-1, a Spanish communications satellite that can fit in the palm of your hand; NOOR 1A and NOOR 1B, communication satellite demonstrators operated by the U.S. company Stara Space; SMOG-P, a payload built by students at Hungary's Budapest University of Technology and Economics that will measure electromagnetic pollution; and TRSI Sat, which will be run by ACME AtronOmatic, a company that provides flight-tracking services to the aviation community and other users.

You can read more about these payloads in this Rocket Lab statement.

The Nov. 25 mission, which Rocket Lab calls "Running Out of Fingers," will be the company's 10th launch overall and sixth of 2019. But Rocket Lab plans to ramp up its cadence considerably, eventually getting Electron rockets off the ground every week, or perhaps even more frequently.

To help make that happen, the company wants to start recovering and reusing the first stage of the two-stage, 57-foot-tall (17 meters) Electron, which is capable of lofting a maximum of about 500 lbs. (225 kg) to orbit.

Running Out of Fingers will mark a big step toward this goal, if all goes according to plan. The first stage flying on Nov. 25 is outfitted with a variety of sensors and navigation gear, as well as a reaction-control system that will allow the booster to orient itself as it descends.

The main goal is to "see if we can bring this back from space into the atmosphere without breaking up or disintegrating," Lars Hoffman, Rocket Lab's senior vice president of global launch services, said during a panel discussion yesterday (Nov. 6) at the U.S. Air Force's first Space Pitch Day in San Francisco. "We will learn from that, and then we'll move on, move on, move on."

If everything works out, Rocket Lab will eventually move on to catching falling Electron first stages with a helicopter, then inspecting and reflying them in relatively short order.

Running Out of Fingers, like all previous Rocket Lab missions, will lift off from the company's Launch Complex 1, on New Zealand's North Island. But Electron rockets will soon start flying from American soil as well. Launch Complex 2, which Rocket Lab has been building at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia, should be ready to host missions before the end of 2019, company representatives have said.

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

Need more space? Subscribe to our sister title "All About Space" Magazine for the latest amazing news from the final frontier!

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Japanese 'Shooting-Star' Satellite to Launch on Landmark Rocket Lab Flight This Month - Space.com

Boeings CST-100 Starliners four launch abort engines and several orbital maneuvering and attitude ... [+] control thrusters ignite in the companys Pad Abort Test, pushing the spacecraft away from the test stand with a combined 160,000 pounds of thrust, from Launch Complex 32 on White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Early Monday morning, Boeings CST-100 Starliner spacecraft completed its first pad abort test, marking completion of an important technical milestone ahead of their uncrewed Orbital Flight Test (OFT) currently scheduled for later this year. SpaceXs Dragon 2 spacecraft, which like Starliner is being developed under NASAs Commercial Crew Program, is slated to completed a static fire test soon ahead of its fully integrated In-Flight Abort Test.

Whats the difference between these tests, and why do they matter?

Pad Abort

A pad abort test demonstrates a spacecrafts ability to transport crew and/or cargo to safety in the event of an emergency on the launch pad prior to launch. To demonstrate this capability, the spacecrafts launch abort system (sometimes referred to as a launch escape system) is activated during a trial run, during which the spacecraft must both clear the launch pad and land safely within its authorized landing zone. The setup for this trial run includes a spacecraft with a flight-like abort system, but generally does not include a launch vehicle as it would not be used during the test.

SpaceX Pad Abort Test Concept of Operations

A launch abort system can be thought of as the spacecraft equivalent of a fighter pilots ejection seat. However, instead of ejecting the pilot from the spacecraft, the launch abort system ejects the entire spacecraft away from the launch vehicle and pad. Both Commercial Crew vehicles utilize a pusher abort system, in which the spacecrafts built-in propulsion module is used to propel the vehicle to safety. Since the propulsion module is fully integrated into the spacecraft, these systems have the advantage of providing an abort capability at any point during flight.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - MAY 6: In this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space ... [+] Administration (NASA), SpaceX completes the first key flight test of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, a vehicle designed to carry astronauts to and from space, on May 6, 2015 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)

Some other vehicles, including Russias Soyuz spacecraft, NASAs Apollo capsules, and more recently, NASAs Orion spacecraft, have used an extra solid-fueled rocket to achieve the same goal. This extra rocket is mounted above the capsule on a tower, and is used to tow the spacecraft away from the launch vehicle if an abort is triggered. If not used, these systems are discarded several minutes into flight, after which options for abort are limited to the vehicles remaining system capabilities.

Apollo pad abort test

Boeings test on Monday is reported to have met all of NASAs required criteria for a successful pad abort demonstration. SpaceXs Dragon 2 spacecraft successfully completed an equivalent test in May 2015.

In-Flight Abort

In contrast with a pad abort test, an in-flight abort test verifies a spacecrafts ability to keep crew and/or cargo safe during emergencies that occur after the vehicle has already lifted off the launchpad. In addition to the capability verified by a pad abort test, an in-flight abort test confirms that the spacecraft is able to abort as expected under the high dynamic pressures seen during ascent into space.

To perform this test, a spacecraft with a flight-like abort system must be integrated onto a launch vehicle. The vehicle then launches and performs a nominal ascent until it reaches its maximum dynamic pressure (often referred to by engineers as max q). At this point in the flight profile, the abort system is activated and used to separate the spacecraft from the launch vehicle. To complete the test, the separated spacecraft must be safely returned to Earth.

Of note, in-flight aborts that occur during operational flight will sometimes result in the spacecraft continuing the mission but aborting into a lower orbit than originally planned (usually referred to as an abort to orbit). The choice to return to Earth or to abort to orbit is dependent on multiple factors, including the altitude already achieved at time of abort, the objectives of the mission, and on which trajectory has the greatest chance of saving the crew.

As of November 2019, neither NASA Commercial Crew vehicle has yet completed an in-flight abort test. The last NASA-funded vehicle to complete this test was the Orion spacecraft, which did so in July 2019.

A NASA Orion test vehicle lifts off aboard a booster rocket from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape ... [+] Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch was a test to evaluate Orion's launch abort system designed to quickly get astronauts safely away from their launch vehicle if there is a problem during ascent to space. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The hardware for SpaceXs Dragon 2 In-Flight Abort Test has already arrived at the launch site in Cape Canaveral, with NASA and industry officials stating that the test is likely to occur before the end of 2019. Since SpaceX has already completed its uncrewed demonstration mission for Dragon 2 (Demo-1), the In-Flight Abort Test will be one of the final Dragon 2 hardware demonstrations ahead of the vehicles first crewed flight in 2020.

While NASAs Commercial Crew Program requires all providers to complete verification of an in-flight abort capability prior to crewed flight, Boeing has opted to complete this verification via analysis instead of via test. SpaceXs In-Flight Abort Test will therefore be the Commercial Crew Programs only flight hardware demonstration of an in-flight abort scenario.

A Brief History of Spacecraft Aborts

Though it is rare for a spacecraft to experience an abort scenario, there are several documented instances of aborts during crewed space missions that highlight the necessity of vehicle abort capabilities.

NASAs Space Shuttle experienced its only in-flight abort on STS-51F, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on July 29, 1985. The Challenger spacecraft used for this mission experienced multiple failed sensor readings on its main engines, forcing the crew to perform an in-flight Abort To Orbit (ATO) maneuver. This maneuver required manual intervention by the missions commander to switch the cockpit abort mode switch to ATO and depress the abort switch button, which activated the flight control software sequence for an ATO abort. While the spacecraft aborted its initial flight path and did not reach its intended orbit, the mission was still carried out successfully at a slightly lowered than planned orbital altitude. Due to the Shuttles unique vehicle design, aborting to orbit was considered preferable to returning to Earth, which was considered far riskier.

STS-51F lands safely at Edwards Air Force Base after successfully completing its mission.

Russias Soyuz vehicle has experienced 3 launch aborts during its multi-decade history of flight. The first of these occurred in 1975, when the Soyuz 18-1s second stage failed to separate prior to the rockets third stage ignition. The vehicles flight computer detected an anomaly and triggered an in-flight abort, but as the vehicle had already reached an altitude of 145km, its launch abort tower had already been jettisoned. As a result, the Soyuz capsules on-board propulsion systems had to be used for the abort. Both crew members survived and were successfully recovered.

The only documented instance of a crewed pad abort occurred during Soyuz T-10-1, which was slated to launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome on September 26, 1983. The launch vehicle for this mission caught fire on the pad, triggering a pad abort. The Soyuzs launch abort system separated the spacecraft just two seconds before the launch vehicle exploded, saving the crews lives.

Soyuz T-10-1 spacecraft uses its Launch Escape System to launch away from the exploding launch ... [+] vehicle.

The most recent instance of a Soyuz abort was in October 2018, when Soyuz MS-10 experienced an in-flight anomaly during staging that caused one of the boosters to slide down the core stage and rupture the tank. The launch abort system successfully activated once the anomaly was detected, pulling the capsule away from the launch vehicle and to safety. Both crew members were recovered alive and in good health.

Every spacecraft manufacturer builds its abort systems with the hope that they will never need to be used. But when it comes to human spaceflight, you cant be too safe.

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The Importance of Spacecraft Abort Tests - Forbes

Vertical Research Partners is the first firm to begin covering Virgin Galactic, initiating the space tourism venture's stock with a "buy" rating and saying its risk "is misunderstood."

"We think the technical risk to SPCE's human spaceflight program is less draconian than the stock appears to be pricing in," analyst Darryl Genovesi said in a note to investors.

Virgin Galactic began trading publicly last week, following the completion of its merger with Chamath Palihapitiya's venture Social Capital Hedosophia. Genovesi sees Virgin Galactic, ticker 'SPCE,' as a standout for being the only stock investors can trade in a niche but growing market.

"SPCE is the only means by which a public equity investor may gain pure-play exposure to human spaceflight, a socially-important endeavour, and the only means by which a public equity investor may gain ANY exposure to space tourism, creating scarcity value that we think can drive the stock higher as the risk-profile becomes better understood by investors," Genovesi said.

Shares of Virgin Galactic initially rose in trading on Tuesday following Genovesi's call. But the stock reversed course midday, slipping 3.4% from its previous close of $9.35 a share. Vertical Research has a $20 price target on the stock, more than double its current price.

Virgin Galactic spacecraft Unity fires its engine and heads to space with its first test passenger on board in February 2019.

Virgin Galactic | gif by @thesheetztweetz | CNBC

Virgin Galactic plans on flying high net worth individuals through extreme environments, and an accident mid-flight could be fatal. In 2014, an accident during a Virgin Galactic test flight killed its co-pilot. Since that fatal crash, the company updated the spacecraft and has spent the last few years verifying its rocket-powered vehicle can safely and repeatedly fly people to the edge of space.

Genovesi noted the safety risk as a particular weight on Virgin Galactic's stock price, saying "the market appears to imply a high probability of failure, higher than we believe is appropriate." His firm believes investors are using "a Space Shuttle like crash rate" to estimate Virgin Galactic's potential failure rate. The Space Shuttle had two fatal accidents in 135 flights, or a crash rate of 1.5%. But that isn't an accurate comparison, Genovesi says.

"Shuttle's mission profile was much more demanding than SPCE's space tourism mission profile is," Genovesi said.

Vertical Research partners sees Virgin Galactic's spacecraft as more comparable to the X-15 rocket-powered aircraft flown by NASA and the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s. The X-15 crashed once in 199 flights, a crash rate of 0.5%.

"And that was 50 YEARS AGO, meaning SPCE can likely to better," Genovesi said. "Additionally, we don't think a catastrophic failure would necessarily end the program as both Shuttle and X-15 programs continued following their respective fatal crashes and SPCE appears to have retained ~90% of its backlog through its fatal crash in 2014."

Virgin Galactic has 603 customers signed up to fly once it begins commercial operations next year, at a price of $250,000 per ticket. Genovesi reiterated an advantage outlined by Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides to CNBC last week: The space tourism venture is essentially a bet on the fast growing luxury experiences market.

"Globally, we think around 2 million people can experience this over the coming years at this price point," Whitesides said.

The analyst believes Virgin Galactic represents an opportunity to invest in three areas: The rapidly growing luxury consumer market, the pioneering of new technologies and "the recently popular theme of experiences over possessions."

"In short, we don't think SPCE will have any trouble getting customers to sign up to come to space while the economics of its operation (70% incremental EBITDA margins) are highly attractive," Genovesi said.

CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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Buy Virgin Galactic stock because space tourism will be safer than you think, analyst says - CNBC

Just be thankful there are students like Paige Northway and Nathan Wacker, two University of Washington students who think its neat to work on stuff like a satellite the size of a shoebox.

For most of us, all that is beyond our comprehension.

But thats how things move forward in our high-tech age. Going from rotary phones to the 1973 brick-like mobile phones to todays 7-ounce smartphones entails complicated engineering, and that means technologically savvy people like Northway and Wacker.

In case you missed it and you probably did one big part of the future in space is tiny satellites weighing maybe 7 pounds, with thousands orbiting around the Earth. Their size, numbers and advancements in technology will mean everything from making the internet faster to helping climate research.

Instead of relying on two or three large satellites to look at weather, a whole bunch of mini-satellites can cover an area in much more detail.

Earlier this month, at 7 in the morning, a satellite assembled by about six dozen UW students was blasted up into space at NASAs Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast.It piggybacked on an unmanned cargo spacecraft sent to the International Space Station to resupply astronauts and pick up their garbage.

Over the past five years the students had spent an estimated 25,000 hours on the project, including building a custom thruster for the satellite. The thruster uses new technology that uses no moving parts. Instead, sparks are used to vaporize small amounts of solid sulfur, which then propel the satellite.

Thats not the kind of propulsion thatll have the power to send a craft up into space. But its enough to nudge a mini-satellite while in orbit.

Another custom-built item was a system that would transmit data at such a high frequency that itd quickly send down reams of information at a cheaper cost than now available. The UW mini-satellite will transmit down a test packet. For those of you that paid attention in science class, that high frequency is 24GHz, which is in the K-band spectrum.

All this work is a complicated, long ways from playing an intergalactic-themed video game or movies, says professor Robert Winglee, the groups adviser.

The name CubeSats is used to describe this new way of making a cheap, small satellite a 4-inch cube thats standardized in size so parts can be mass-produced. The UW one is three times as big. The students decided to call it HuskySat-1.

Northway says the hardware for the UW one cost around $40,000. NASA provided the main grant money.

Because of the standardization, the UW mini-satellite has a little Sony camera module that sells for $65 and will take pictures of Earth. Certainly, there are plenty of those from space.

But camera setup was built with the help of students at the Raisbeck Aviation High School in the Highline School District.

Northway, 30, is a doctoral student in Earth and Space Sciences.

Right from the start while in high school in Brainerd, Minnesota, I did well in math. I knew I wanted to do engineering, she says. Her dad runs a construction consulting firm, her mom runs payroll at a resort.

Wacker, 20, is a junior in computer science and a graduate of Mercer Island High School.

NASA spokesman Keith Koehler says the CubeSats program is a success, with 23 universities around the country getting funding students are receiving the hands-on aspects of the projects, as well as the real-world problem resolution.

Technology has advanced so much, says Koehler, that the mini-satellites are at least 1,000 times faster in processing speed than the guidance computer on the historic Apollo 11 mission.

Curt Blake, president and CEO of SpaceFlight, the Seattle company that assists in ride-share launches for CubeSats, says the mini-satellite industry is in its infancy. He compares it to the smartphone, which initially was used mostly for messaging and email.

Now there are millions of applications available, he says. Access to space is doing the same thing.

In a way, the mini-satellites hark to the very first ones. The very first satellite, Sputnik I, launched by the Soviets in 1957, weighed 184 pounds. Explorer I, the first U. S. satellite, launched the next year in 1958, weighed all of 31 pounds.

The Cygnus cargo spacecraft carrying the UW mini-satellite and other mini-satellites is now attached to the space station, where it will stay until early 2020.

Then the Cygnus will leave the space station, at which point the mini-satellites will be placed into orbit from a deployer with springs that will push them out into space.

The Cygnus will burn up as it enters the atmosphere, along with the garbage itll be carrying.

The UW mini-satellite will circle the Earth every 94 minutes for around 3 years, begin to lose altitude and then also burn up.

When Wacker tells his 20-something friends about the project, about this contraption the size of a bread loaf thatll be orbiting the Earth, he says they reply, Thats cool. Wow.

It really is.

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Now in space, a cutting-edge satellite the size of a shoebox, and UW students built it - Seattle Times

Representational image

Heart cells are altered in space, but return to normal within 10 days on Earth, say researchers who examined cell-level cardiac function and gene expression in human heart cells cultured aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for 5.5 weeks.

Exposure to microgravity altered the expression of thousands of genes, but largely normal patterns of gene expression reappeared within 10 days after returning to Earth, according to the study published in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

"We're surprised about how quickly human heart muscle cells are able to adapt to the environment in which they are placed, including microgravity," said senior study author Joseph C. Wu from Stanford University.

These studies may not only provide insight into cellular mechanisms that could benefit astronaut health during long-duration spaceflight, but also potentially lay the foundation for new insights into improving heart health on Earth.

Past studies have shown that spaceflight induces physiological changes in cardiac function, including reduced heart rate, lowered arterial pressure, and increased cardiac output.

But to date, most cardiovascular microgravity physiology studies have been conducted either in non-human models or at tissue, organ, or systemic levels.

Relatively little is known about the role of microgravity in influencing human cardiac function at the cellular level.

To address this question, the research team studied human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs). They generated hiPSC lines from three individuals by reprogramming blood cells, and then differentiated them into heart cells.

Beating heart cells were then sent to the ISS aboard a SpaceX spacecraft as part of a commercial resupply service mission. Simultaneously, ground control heart cells were cultured on Earth for comparison purposes.

Upon return to Earth, space-flown heart cells showed normal structure and morphology. However, they did adapt by modifying their beating pattern and calcium recycling patterns.

In addition, the researchers performed RNA sequencing of heart cells harvested at 4.5 weeks aboard the ISS, and 10 days after returning to Earth.

These results showed that 2,635 genes were differentially expressed among flight, post-flight, and ground control samples.

Most notably, gene pathways related to mitochondrial function were expressed more in space-flown heart cells.

A comparison of the samples revealed that heart cells adopt a unique gene expression pattern during spaceflight, which reverts to one that is similar to ground-side controls upon return to normal gravity, the study noted.

According to Wu, limitations of the study include its short duration and the use of 2D cell culture.

In future studies, the researchers plan to examine the effects of spaceflight and microgravity using more physiologically relevant hiPSC-derived 3D heart tissues with various cell types, including blood vessel cells.

"We also plan to test different treatments on the human heart cells to determine if we can prevent some of the changes the heart cells undergo during spaceflight," Wu said.

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Human Heart Cells Transform in Space; Return to Normal on Earth: Study - The Weather Channel

Additive manufacturing is a rapidly evolving, disruptive technology, Singer said. As NASA continues to invest in in-space additive technology innovations, we welcome collaborations with industry and academia to develop these technologies.

I applaud the University of Alabama for pursuing the development of advanced technologies that will help NASA achieve our mission.

EXPANDING EXPERTISE

UA will enhance its core curriculum in areas of advanced and in-space manufacturing and foster new collaborations to further this emerging technology.

Areas of emphasis include modeling, analysis and simulation, data analytics, robotics, rendezvous and capture, navigation, advanced materials, on-site resource utilization, additive manufacturing, digital design, and manufacturing and construction.

Our partnership with NASA is an important priority in our efforts to provide opportunities for our students and researchers to offer solutions to leading-edge challenges, Bell said.

Working to further in-space manufacturing will establish the Universitys expertise in the area while training a skilled workforce our state can rely on to remain competitive in the global economy.

Marshall has worked with UA through multiple Space Act Agreements since 2015. Through these agreements and other partnership mechanisms, NASA shares resources, personnel and expertise, facilities and equipment, and technology with UA to advance aerospace research or achieve mission goals.

Marshall has entered Space Act Agreements with numerous colleges, including in-state institutions Auburn University, Alabama A&M University in Huntsville and the University of North Alabama in Florence.

NASA is actively partnering with universities and industry from across the country to leverage and accelerate technology development in key areas, especially areas that will make it possible to sustainably live and work on the lunar surface, achieving the Artemis vision, Singer said.

Artemis is NASAs path to the Moon and the next step in human exploration of our solar system. Through Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024, assisted by innovative partners, technologies and systems.

NASA is investing in innovative in-space manufacturing technologies that will aid in developing the technological solutions needed to enable human missions to the Moon, Mars and other deep space destinations.

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NASA Marshall expands ties with UA to advance in-space manufacturing - Made In Alabama

Will we one day combine tardigrade DNA with our cells to go to Mars?

Chris Mason, a geneticist and associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell University in New York, has investigated the genetic effects of spaceflight and how humans might overcome these challenges to expand our species farther into the solar system. One of the (strangest) ways that we might protect future astronauts on missions to places like Mars, Mason said, might involve the DNA of tardigrades, tiny micro-animals that can survive the most extreme conditions, even the vacuum of space!

Mason led one of the 10 teams of researchers NASA chose to study twin astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly. After launching in 2015, Scott Kelly spent almost a year aboard the International Space Station while his twin brother, Mark Kelly, stayed back on Earth.

Related:By the Numbers: Astronaut Scott Kelly's Year-in-Space Mission

Geneticist Chris Mason discusses the genetic effects of spaceflight at the 8th Human Genetics in NYC Conference on Oct. 29, 2019.

(Image credit: Chelsea Gohd/Space.com)

By comparing how they biologically reacted to their vastly different environments during that time, scientists aimed to learn more about how long-duration missions affects the human body. Mason and the dozens of other researchers who worked to assess the genetic effects of spaceflight uncovered a wealth of data that has so far revealed many new findings about how space affects the human body.

Researchers hope that this work, which continues today, might inform strategies to support astronaut health on future missions. Mason discussed some of the results of this research at a talk at the 8th Human Genetics in NYC Conference on Oct. 29.

In addition to the research Mason discussed at the conference, these researchers are working on seven more papers incorporating the data from the twins study. However, they also hope to use new data from a larger sample.

"We want to do some of the same studies, longitudinal studies, with people on Earth, people in space," Mason told Space.com at the conference.

By studying, specifically, how certain genes are expressed during the different stages of spaceflight (including the intense return to Earth), these research efforts could support future efforts to mitigate the dangers of spaceflight, Mason said.

For instance, if further studies were to confirm that landing back on Earth were harmful to the human body, scientists could develop ways to prevent those detrimental effects. But with such a small body of data (the twins study was just two people), scientists aren't ready to prescribe any specific treatment or preventative medicine to alter how humans genetically react to spaceflight.

"I think we do what is normally done in science We see something interesting; let's try it in mice first," Mason said.

He noted that they might not even find it necessary to prescribe anything to alter the effects they've seen in astronauts like Scott Kelly. "Some of those changes, even though they're dramatic, maybe that's how the body needed to respond," Mason said.

Related: Space Radiation Threat to Astronauts Explained (Infographic)

While, Mason noted, future astronauts might be prescribed medicine or other tools to help to mitigate the effects which they've uncovered with this research. However, new studies are investigating how tools such as gene editing could make humans more capable of traveling farther into space and even to planets such as Mars.

One of the main health concerns with space travel is radiation exposure. If, for example, scientists could figure out a way to make human cells more resilient to the effects of radiation, astronauts could remain healthier for longer durations in space. Theoretically, this type of technology could also be used to combat the effects of radiation on healthy cells during cancer treatments on Earth, Mason noted.

However, the idea of tinkering with human genes is controversial. But Mason emphasized that there will likely be decades of research completed before this kind of science is applied to humans.

"I don't have any plans of having engineered astronauts in the next one to two decades," Mason said. "If we have another 20 years of pure discovery and mapping and functional validation of what we think we know, maybe by 20 years from now, I'm hoping we could be at the stage where we would be able to say we can make a human that could be better surviving on Mars."

But what does it mean to genetically engineer a person to better survive in space or on another planet? There are multiple possible approaches.

One way that scientists could alter future astronauts is through epigenetic engineering, which essentially means that they would "turn on or off" the expression of specific genes, Mason explained

Alternatively, and even more strangely, these researchers are exploring how to combine the DNA of other species, namely tardigrades, with human cells to make them more resistant to the harmful effects of spaceflight, like radiation.

This wild concept was explored in a 2016 paper, and Mason and his team aim to build upon that research to see if, by using the DNA of ultra-resilient tardigrades, they could protect astronauts from the harmful effects of spaceflight.

Genetically editing humans for space travel would likely be a part of natural changes to the human physiology that could occur after living on Mars for a number of years, Mason said. "It's not if we evolve; it's when we evolve," he added.

While changes to the human body are to be expected as our species expands off-Earth, there is a way to do this science responsibly, Mason said. "In terms of a question of liberty, you're engineering it [a future human] to have lots more opportunities, again assuming we haven't taken away opportunities," he said. "If we learned that, in some way, when we decided to try and prove the ability of humans to live beyond Earth, and we take away their ability to live on Earth, I think that would be unjust."

Genetically engineering humans could be ethical if it makes people more capable of inhabiting Mars safely without interfering with their ability to live on Earth, Mason said.

Follow Chelsea Gohd on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Need more space? Subscribe to our sister title "All About Space" Magazine for the latest amazing news from the final frontier!

(Image credit: All About Space)

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Can We Genetically Engineer Humans to Survive Missions to Mars? - Space.com

NASA's Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a stargazing platform unlike any other.

SOFIA observes nebulae and galaxies in a variety of "colors" of infrared light. It may not boast as large a mirror as some of its ground-based relatives, and it doesn't enjoy the complete freedom from Earth's atmosphere that the Spitzer Space Telescope does, but SOFIA's ability to capture a wide range of wavelengths and distinguish between fine shades of colors make it an observatory unrivaled in the astronomical world. The fact that SOFIA lives on an airplane also makes it pretty remarkable, as it has made observations from above a dozen countries spanning both hemispheres.

"This observatory allows us access to a part of the universe that otherwise we cannot study from any other facility," said Naseem Rangwala, an astrophysicist at NASA Ames Research Center and principal investigator of the SOFIA observing program.

Taking over from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, NASA's previous high-flying infrared eye, SOFIA has been watching the skies since 2010 and is scheduled to operate until the early 2030s. The observatory takes the form of a compact Boeing 747, retrofitted specifically for this purpose. The aircraft makes about four flights each week, cruising for 10 hours at a time between 40,000 and 44,000 feet (12,000 and 13,000 meters), putting it above more than 99% of the infrared-scattering water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. For most of the year SOFIA operates from California, but it also makes trips to New Zealand for Southern Hemisphere stargazing, as well as to Germany, whose space agency developed three of the platform's eight instruments.

Related: Now You Can 3D-Print a NASA SOFIA Flying Telescope of Your Very Own!

A large door toward the rear of the craft opens to reveal a 8.9-foot (2.7 m), nearly 20-ton mirror, which swivels nimbly to maintain a fixed lock on its celestial marks while the plane bobs and vibrates.

"One of the things I like best is just watching the telescope," said Michael Person, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who uses SOFIA to study planetary atmospheres. "Eventually you realize the telescope is perfectly still as it must be to be pointing at the target, and it's the plane and you and everything else that's jostling and moving around."

Seats have been stripped from the main cabin to transform it into a control room, with table-mounted consoles for instrument operators, data analysts and visiting scientists. The flight crew and navigators hang out on an upper level, and the front of the plane retains its seats for takeoff, landing and enjoying the view. "In the Southern Hemisphere, you get to see the lights of the aurora," Rangwala said. "It's an amazing experience."

A panoramic view of SOFIA's interior.

(Image credit: NASA)

Portable, cutting-edge observatories don't come cheap. SOFIA cost $85.2 million to run in 2017, putting it close to the Hubble Space Telescope as one of NASA's priciest programs (although DLR, the German space agency, shoulders 20% of SOFIAs cost). But the missions the telescopes work on couldn't be more different.

Once a telescope arrives in space, that's typically the end of its development. SOFIA, however, which returns to the ground every day, can add new instruments and upgrade old ones without launching a single rocket.

In 2015, the German Aerospace Center upgraded its German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies (GREAT) instrument aboard SOFIA. With the new hardware, researchers were able to identify in deep space molecules of helium hydride the type of molecules long thought to have participated in the universe's earliest chemical reactions. "This molecule was predicted by theorists for decades," Rangwala said. "We finally found it."

Then last year SOFIAs High-Resolution Airborne Wideband Camera Plus (HAWC+) came online, allowing researchers to image magnetic fields and study the role they play in star creation.

Magnetic fields in the Orion Nebula shown as steam lines over an infrared image taken by the Very Large Telescope in Chile. SOFIA's HAWC+ instrument is sensitive to the alignment of dust grains, which line up along magnetic fields, letting researchers infer the direction and strength.

(Image credit: NASA/SOFIA/D. Chauss et al. and European Southern Observatory/M. McCaughrean et al.)

Another unique characteristic of SOFIA is its range. Some telescopes specialize in a few particular colors of infrared light. Others, like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, are powerful but narrowly focused on a small spot of space. SOFIA, however, can do it all. Its instruments span much of the infrared spectrum from a few microns to hundreds. Stars burn brightly enough to emit visible light, but in this other swath of the spectrum SOFIA can pick out dimmer, cooler objects from galaxies to nebulae to dust clouds, similar to how infrared goggles can discern people and animals at night. The telescope can also tell one shade from another with rare precision an important ability for spotting the fingerprints of individual molecules.

The astronomical community has fully embraced the platform's unique rsum of skills. For instance, Michael Person, a research scientist at MIT, used SOFIA to observe Pluto in the summer of 2015. He and his colleagues have been studying the dwarf planet's atmosphere for 20 years through an eclipse-like phenomenon called occultation when Pluto moves in front of a star, casting a shadow out into space. At that moment, starlight passes through Pluto's atmosphere, and any telescope that finds itself in Pluto's diminutive shadow can extract some information about the gases that surround the dwarf planet.

Most occultation shadows fall over the ocean, though, and even if they don't, their path across the Earth is tough to predict. But SOFIA can overcome both of those challenges. In June of 2015, Person found himself on board the aircraft, fielding calls from MIT with final predictions and updating the navigators, who tweaked the flight plan in real time to chase Pluto's shadow across the Pacific Ocean. "At the last minute we can reposition [SOFIA] in a way you can't just quickly move a telescope on the ground," Person said.

The team's improvising paid off. By observing Pluto's atmosphere in two colors, they were able to help settle a long-standing debate about whether the dwarf planet's fuzziness indicated haze or heat. Two weeks later, the New Horizons probe flew by Pluto and confirmed their findings: Pluto was hazy. "It was basically the ideal experiment," Person said.

An image of stars forming in the W51 stellar nursery. The SOFIA FORCAST mosaic (color) is superimposed on a star field image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

(Image credit: NASA/SOFIA/Lim and De Buizer et al. and Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

Recently, SOFIA has embarked on two legacy programs both require observations spanning many hours. One aims to study groups of stars of different sizes to determine whether their bubbles and shockwaves make it easier or harder for other stars to form nearby.

The other is targeting a large tract of the center of the Milky Way about the size of four full moons. Despite an abundance of star ingredients, something seems to be stopping stellar birth in this region, and researchers hope more detailed images will help them figure out what.

Even as the more powerful James Webb Space Telescope comes online, Rangwala emphasized that SOFIA's complementary nature will make it an even more valuable part of NASA's fleet of astronomical hardware. Such sweeping maps of the Milky Way will be essential for helping the much more narrowly focused space telescope get its bearings, she said. "If the [JWST] wants to know where to point, [SOFIA] will be one of the most precise instruments for pointing."

Additional resources:

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NASA's SOFIA Observatory: The Flying Telescope - Space.com

llustration depicting a Type I X-ray burst.

NASA has detected a massive thermonuclear explosion coming from outer space, caused by a massive thermonuclear flash on the surface of a pulsarthe crushed remains of a star that long ago exploded as a supernova.

The explosion released as much energy in 20 seconds as the Sun does in nearly 10 days.

NASA's Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope on the International Space Station (ISS) detected a sudden spike of X-rays on August 20, reports the US space agency. The X-ray burst, the brightest seen by NICER so far, came from an object named "J1808".

The observations reveal many phenomena that have never been seen together in a single burst. In addition, the subsiding fireball briefly brightened again for reasons astronomers cannot yet explain.

"This burst was outstanding. We see a two-step change in brightness, which we think is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface, and other features that will help us decode the physics of these powerful events," said lead researcher Peter Bult, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The detail NICER captured on this record-setting eruption will help astronomers fine-tune their understanding of the physical processes driving the thermonuclear flare-ups of it and other bursting pulsars.

"J1808" is located about 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. It spins at a dizzying 401 rotations each second, and is one member of a binary system. Its companion is a brown dwarf, an object larger than a giant planet yet too small to be a star. A steady stream of hydrogen gas flows from the companion toward the neutron star, and it accumulates in a vast storage structure called an accretion disk.

Astronomers employ a concept called the "Eddington limit", named after English astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, to describe the maximum radiation intensity a star can have before that radiation causes the star to expand. This point depends strongly on the composition of the material lying above the emission source.

"Our study exploits this longstanding concept in a new way," said co-author Deepto Chakrabarty, a professor of physics at MIT.

"We are apparently seeing the Eddington limit for two different compositions in the same X-ray burst. This is a very powerful and direct way of following the nuclear burning reactions that underlie the event."

A paper describing the findings has been published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Weather Companys primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

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Massive Space Explosion Releases as Much Energy in 20 Seconds as Sun Does in 10 Days - The Weather Channel

Airstream has become known as the makers of the pinnacle of recreational vehicles signified by their silver bullet profiles. But a half-century ago, Airstream also was recognized as a supplier of transportation services to the American space program. Now the company is getting a chance to reprise its role in rocketry as the U.S. space program begins experiencing a bit of a renaissance.

The Jackson Center, Ohio-based manufacturer has initiated a partnership with Boeing as the aircraft giant competes with Elon Musks SpaceX to launch next year what would be the first contingent of Americans taking off for space from U.S. soil since the last Space Shuttle launch in 2011. Boeings CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is slated to carry three humans to the International Space Station in 2020.

No, the Starliner isnt shaped like an Airstream travel trailer. But Airstream is supplying a vehicle known as Astrovan II to transport the astronauts to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The vehicle is a modified Airstream Atlas Touring Coach named after the original Airstream trailer, nicknamed Astrovan, that, beginning in 1983, carried astronauts the last few miles to their space-shuttle launches at the Cape.

More than just a promotion, this represents the latest chapter in Airstreams involvement in manned space flight, Airstream CEO Bob Wheeler told Chief Executive. We love this part of our history.

And actually, Airstreams history with the space program goes back way before the space-shuttle program. Airstream first became associated with the space program in the public consciousness in 1969, the year Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It was tasked with supplying a vehicle that many Americans of baby boomer vintage and older will remember: the trailer that quarantined astronauts from other earthlings after they returned home from the moon.

NASA scientists wanted to protect against the possibility that the astronauts might carry back some alien pathogen from humanitys first physical contact with the lunar environment. And so Airstream outfitted a modified version of its Excella RV to house Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins after they splashed down on Earth from their triumphal return from the moon.

We were seen as a capable technology company building mobile environments, where we developed special air filtering and handling equipment, Wheeler explained. They wanted to keep the astronauts isolated for a time in that kind of environment. It seems quaint at this point, but put yourself back then.

Airstream built a total of four of the mobile quarantine labs for NASAs use in the last years of the Apollo program. Now it is being re-enlisted as America begins re-engaging space travel in a number of ways.

Some key fans of the brand inside Boeing, Wheeler said, helped get Airstream consideration for the role that became Astrovan II, including Warren Brown, Boeings executive director of marketing, brand and advertising, and Chris Ferguson, who led the final space-shuttle mission as an astronaut and is scheduled, at the age of 59, to command the first Starliner flight.

He was a three-time original shuttle astronaut, Wheeler said. He told me he loved the original Astrovan. So we had [Brown] pushing on one side and the guy whos leading the [next] mission say hed love to have Airstream be part of this story.

Wheeler said the company, a unit of Thor Industries, is just thrilled with its partnership with Boeing. Its an interesting sidelight to the [Airstream] brand overall, but it also demonstrates that very high-level technology organizations respect what we do in a way that compels them to involve us in their efforts.

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Airstream Enjoys Return to U.S. Space Program in Partnership with Boeing - Chief Executive Group

Beloved stand-up comedian and "Star Trek: Discovery" actor Tig Notaro is proud to be in the Trek universe, but isn't so sure she'd fly to space herself.

Notaro recently took some time to chat with Space.com during the weekend of the Bentzen Ball, an annual comedy festival in Washington, D.C., that she curates and performs at. During the conversation, Notaro revealed her feelings regarding human spaceflight, the importance of diversity and representation, and what it feels like to become a part of the "Star Trek" universe.

Notaro has recently played chief engineer Reno in "Star Trek: Discovery" and an astronaut in the film "Lucy in the Sky." She also recently made waves in the space world as she joined forces with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope on Twitter.

Related:'Star Trek: Discovery' Renewed for Third Season

Here you can see comedian and actor Tig Notaro as Chief Engineer Reno in "Brother," Episode 201 of "Star Trek: Discovery."

(Image credit: Jan Thijs/CBS)

"It's not anything that I chose," Notaro said about her work in sci-fi with roles in both Trek and "Lucy in the Sky." But, while she noted that she wasn't seeking out sci-fi acting gigs, "I feel open to that world," the actor said.

"It's very different," Notaro added as a person who works primarily as a stand-up comic about her foray into science fiction. But, while it's different, "I like it, I like being a recurring role on "Star Trek" I'm not looking to become a full cast member but I enjoy the world, and I enjoy the cast and crew, and I think what I have going on is kind of perfect."

Now, while Notaro might be a relatively new face in the sci-fi world, "I did follow 'Star Trek' when I was a child, the original series obviously I'm more familiar with Discovery now, but I love being a part of it, if just simply for the ability to tell people I am on 'Star Trek,' it's really fun to be able to say that."

"It's fun, I'm proud to be a part of it," she added. "My sons, they think I actually work in space because whenever I go off to Toronto to film 'Star Trek,' I always tell them I have to go work on the space rocket "

Notaro, unsurprisingly, had a few funny words to say about her other recent sci-fi work in "Lucy in the Sky." According to Notaro, the film's director Noah Hawley liked her stand-up work and reached out, then joked that he thought, "she could probably act like herself in this too." She added that she received a nice surprise after filming, when the "Lucy in the Sky" team gave her the on-screen spacesuit that she wore in the movie.

While Notaro has recently played characters who either travel to space ("Lucy in the Sky") or spend their lives working in space ("Star Trek: Discovery"), she's not sure she would launch into space herself.

"I think it's really exciting and terrifying," she said. "If I could be in space, I would like to just be teleported; I don't know that I would want that actually takeoff and journey to outer space."

"I was just talking to my wife about that; she has absolutely no interest in being in outer space. I don't think were gonna run into 'should we go, should we not go?'" Notaro said, adding that, while her wife isn't interested, her sons would probably want to go. "I would bring my sons. I really think they would be interested."

Notaro, as a gay woman leading in stand-up comedy, is no stranger to providing representation for marginalized groups in spaces typically dominated by straight men.

On the topic of representation and diversity in Trek, Notaro noted that "It's really impressive, 'Star Trek' was already so ahead of its time with diversity and representation, but that's, I think, another part of what makes me proud to be a part of that show," she said. "It's really thoughtful it's just a smart, thoughtful show and it's nice to be a part of something that's positive. It's not just some random space series or sci-fi project. It's a really smart, thoughtful, diverse series."

"I'm certainly in ridiculous things, like my own nonsense talk show, but the other projects that I do, it is nice to have that anchor of pride with something. And I think it's tremendously important to have the representation that they do and the diversity." Notaro added.

This past year, NASA astronaut Anne McClain became the first active astronaut to be out as part of the LGBTQ+ community, astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch completed the first all-woman spacewalk, and NASA, with their Artemis program, has increased its efforts to land the first woman on the moon.

So, while Notaro is very familiar with the world of comedy, and now sci-fi, she also spoke about the importance of increasing diversity and representation in other sectors, like the world of real human spaceflight. As she described, it is extremely important "to kind of make sure that people and especially younger generations know that it's possible to do what you think is not possible."

Notaro, who was born in Mississippi, grew up largely before such representation was mainstream. "As a kid, when you don't have that, you just kinda skim past it and and you do feel like 'oh that's not for me' or 'I don't have that opportunity.' And then when you do see somebody, how invigorating it is and all the possibilities that start coming to light. I know it's kind of an obvious thing, but it's really really powerful."

Follow Chelsea Gohd on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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'Star Trek,' Space Travel and Teleportation with Tig Notaro - Space.com