Northrop Grummans Cygnus supply ship was captured by the space stations robotic arm at 4:10 a.m. EST (0910 GMT) Monday. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir took control of the International Space Stations Canadian-built robot arm Monday to capture a Northrop Grumman Cygnus supply ship carrying crew provisions, spacewalking gear to repair an aging particle physics experiment, tech demo satellites for the U.S. military, and an oven to bake the first cookies in space.

The automated cargo freighter arrived at the space station Monday, using GPS and laser-guided navigation to fine-tune its rendezvous along an approach corridor below the research complex. The Cygnus spacecraft held its position less than 40 feet, or about 12 meters, below the station for Meir to command the robotic arm to capture the supply ship at 4:10 a.m. EST (0910 GMT) Monday.

Engineers in mission control were expected to take over commanding of the robot arm to berth the Cygnus spacecraft to the stations Unity module a few hours later, setting the stage for astronauts to open hatches leading to the pressurized cargo carrier to begin unpacking the supplies inside.

The Cygnus spacecraft launched Saturday atop an Antares rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia, with approximately 8,168 pounds (3,705 kilograms) of food, experiments, hardware, and small satellites set for deployment in orbit in the coming months.

Heres a breakdown of the cargo manifest provided by NASA:

The equipment inside the Cygnus cargo freighters Italian-made pressurized compartment include tools and replacement hardware for an upcoming repair of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA flight engineer Andrew Morgan will perform the spacewalks to repair the AMS instrument, which was not designed to be serviced in space. The complicated repairs are expected to require four or five spacewalks to complete, beginning in mid-November.

Mounted on the space stations truss on the final mission of the space shuttle Endeavour in 2011, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is effectively a powerful magnet that attracts cosmic rays, subatomic particles traveling through space at nearly the speed of light.

Three of the four coolant pumps on AMSs silicon tracker, which measures the trajectory and energy of the cosmic rays captured by the instrument, have failed, prompting NASA engineers to develop a plan to repair the coolant system. The work required the development of special tools to cut into the AMS instrument, install new hardware, and re-seal tiny coolant lines.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was never designed to be serviced in space. Read our earlier story for details on the repairs.

There were 15 small satellites riding aboard the Cygnus spacecraft for Saturdays launch.

The biggest of the group is a U.S. Air Force satellite named STPSat 4, which weighs roughly 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and will be transferred into the space stations Kibo module by astronauts the Cygnus hatch is opened. Sponsored by the militarys Space Test Program, STPSat 4 will be one of the largest satellites ever deployed from the space station.

STPSat 4 carries five experiments from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the U.S. Navy. The experiments will test radio frequency module tiles, help develop new solar array technology, collect data with a miniaturized space weather instrument, demonstrate the performance of an advanced U.S.-built star tracker, and assist in nanosatellite tracking.

Craig Technologies, based on Floridas Space Coast, is providing integration services for the STPSat 4 spacecraft, which will be released from the Space Station Integrated Kinetic Launcher for Orbital Payload Systems, or SSIKLOPS, deployer. The mechanism, which was first used in 2014, is designed to release small satellites with masses between 100 and 200 pounds.

The other CubeSats on-board the NG-12 mission are sponsored by NASA, the Air Force, and the National Reconnaissance Office. NanoRacks, a Houston-based space services company, arranged the launch of most of the CubeSats.

Some will be ejected from the space station after the Cygnus spacecrafts arrival, and others will be released from the Cygnus itself after the cargo vehicle departs the station in January.

Other payloads aboard the Cygnus supply ship include a rodent research experiment. Scientists loaded mice into the spacecraft to investigate how the animals respond to changes in their circatidal clock in microgravity.

The 12-hour circatidal clock, in which animals experience equal amounts of light and dark phases each day, is associated with maintaining stress responsive pathways. Scientists want to know if exposure to microgravity changes the animals circadian rhythm.

Recent research shows that genes associated with the 12-hour clock are linked with the most common form of human liver disease. The rodent research experiment on the space station could reveal new insights into liver disease, and give scientists ideas for new pharmaceutical treatments, according to NASA.

The Cygnus also carries an experimental garment that astronauts could use to protect themselves from harmful radiation on future deep space missions to the moon and Mars, outside the natural shielding of Earths magnetic field.

The Cygnus also delivered an oven to the space station designed to bake cookies in microgravity, demonstrating technology that will help future crews cook their own food on lengthy expeditions to the moon or Mars.

But an oven in microgravity doesnt work the same as one on Earth. The heating elements on the Zero-G Oven, developed by Zero G Kitchen and Nanoracks, are arranged around the oven to focus heat in the center, similar to the way a toaster oven works.

Currently, on the International Space Station, there is rally a limited ability to prepare foods in ways that were used to, said IanFichtenbaum, founder and co-chef of Zero G Kitchen.

Astronauts will load cookies into the oven on a special tray designed to keep the food from floating away in microgravity. Temperatures inside the oven will reach up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 degrees Celsius) during baking, according to NASA.

Baking in space is different because theres no gravity, Fichtenbaum said. On earth, that air is churning around in the oven, and thats convection. In space, that is not happening. Instead, we have to use conduction through the oven, conduction through the air, to warm it up.

The first cookie to be baked in space comes from DoubleTree by Hilton, which provided chocolate chip cookie dough for the baking experiment.

Science is awesome, food is awesome, and this is just going to be an amazing journey to see what comes out of this, said JordanaFichtenbaum, founder and co-chef of Zero G Kitchen.

The Cygnus spacecraft also delivered mice to the space stationto investigate how the animals respond to changes in their circatidal clock in microgravity.

The 12-hour circatidal clock, in which animals experience equal amounts of light and dark phases each day, is associated with maintaining stress responsive pathways. Scientists want to know if exposure to microgravity changes the animals circadian rhythm.

Recent research shows that genes associated with the 12-hour clock are linked with the most common form of human liver disease. The rodent research experiment on the space station could reveal new insights into liver disease, and give scientists ideas for new pharmaceutical treatments, according to NASA.

The Cygnus also carries an experimental garment that astronauts could use to protect themselves from harmful radiation on future deep space missions to the moon and Mars, outside the natural shielding of Earths magnetic field.

The AstroRad Vest could shield astronauts from radiation from unpredictable solar storms, which can deliver enough radiation in a few hours to cause serious health problems for space fliers, officials said.

Our innovation was selective shielding, so were selectively shielding those organs that are most prone to either acute radiation syndrome or a cancer down the road, saidOren Milstein, co-founder and chief scientific officer for StemRad, an Israeli company that originally developed the vest garment to protect first responders from radiation during a nuclear accident.

StemRad is partnering with Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for NASAs Orion crew capsule, to transfer the vest technology to space.

Astronauts on the International Space Station will wear the vest to check its comfort and function, according toKathleen Coderre, the AstroRad Vests principal investigator from Lockheed Martin.

The vest weighs nearly 50 pounds (about 22 kilograms). Milstein said the garment is made ofdense polyethylene embedded in a highly flexible textile mesh.

It is an ergonomic experiment, so the vest needs to protect the crew from the deep space radiation environment, but it also needs to be comfortable to wear, flexible enough for them to do their daily duties, Coderre said.

A similar vest will fly on the Orion crew module on the Artemis 1 mission, an unpiloted test flight into orbit around the moon that will verify the spacecrafts readiness to carry astronaut. That experiment will test the vests protective capability in the deep space radiation environment, which is more harsh than the radiation present at the International Space Station in low Earth orbit.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Space station receives spacewalking gear, new baking oven - Spaceflight Now

NASA is looking for ways to make a visit to the International Space Station a little more like a voyage to Mars.

Of course, nothing can ever truly replicate the experience of a Mars mission before humans embark on that journey for real. But NASA can prepare by mimicking as many different aspects of the trip as possible. So the agency is strategizing ways the space station can host such practice sessions without interfering with the orbiting lab's other priorities.

"My job is to imagine what a Mars mission would look like: Where would we go, what would we do, and how would we do it?" Michelle Rucker, an engineer at NASA's Exploration Mission Planning Office, said during a panel held at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington last month. "Going to Mars would be difficult, but fortunately, we don't have to start from scratch, because we've already built these other platforms that we can use to practice some of the operations that we would use on a human Mars mission."

More: NASA Wants 10 More Yearlong Space Station Missions for Mars PrepRelated: International Space Station at 20: A Photo Tour

Spaceflight professionals call those practice scenarios analog missions. The most striking Mars-analog missions so far are those that isolate crewmembers on Earth, perhaps in an exotic destination. But those analogs can't replicate specific characteristics of spaceflight, and that's why NASA decided to investigate ways that the agency could explicitly use the International Space Station as an analog for Mars missions.

"Every analog has some advantages, and every analog has some disadvantages," Julie Robinson, chief scientist of NASA's International Space Station Program, told Space.com. "It's worth thinking about what does [the space station] match and not match across all the different hazards of human spaceflight."

So NASA asked scientists, engineers and astronauts to consider how they could use time on the space station to better prepare for the long journey to Mars, ignoring the traditional constraints that rule on the orbiting laboratory. A team has been evaluating those possibilities and considering how they could be implemented.

Some aren't very feasible. For example, the team concluded, there's no straightforward way to adjust modules on the space station to mimic the squeeze that would be necessary for a Mars mission. That's better done on Earth.

The space station is also a more dynamic environment than a spacecraft headed to Mars would be, making the orbiting laboratory a poor model for the sort of social constraints Mars-bound astronauts would experience.

"The ISS is huge," Robinson said. "Compared to what I think is a likely Mars transit vehicle, it's a palace, and it has lots of coming and going." Trying to redesign these aspects of the space station as an analog would interfere dramatically with everything else about the space station.

But the team found that other key aspects of the long journey could be replicated onboard the space station. One priority is increasing the number of astronauts who remain in space for longer than the typical six-month stay, since a round-trip voyage to Mars would likely last about three years.

"On ISS, we've done a couple of one-year missions, and those have given us some concern," Robinson said. "We need to have enough crewmembers that have been on ISS for a longer period of time so that we really feel like we understand the variability in human responses to being in microgravity for that period of time."

Two NASA astronauts currently in orbit, Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan, will be spending a little longer than usual in flight. But before the agency can study longer flights in earnest, it needs its commercial crew providers, SpaceX and Boeing, to begin ferrying astronauts to the space station next year.

Time on the space station can also give NASA personnel a better sense of just how accurately they can prepare for a voyage that would take them far out of reach of any resupply missions. Rucker imagines an exercise in which mission staff attempt to plan out everything astronauts need for a specific period of time, then check how well the planning matched real crew needs.

"Was there anything not on the list? Did we forget something that, halfway to Mars, you would've said, 'Oh, we ran out of wet wipes,' or whatever," Rucker said. "It's a very simple thing to do, but if you are halfway to Mars and you're out of a critical item, it's not going to be a good day."

A second category of analogs relying on the space station makes use of returning crewmembers as they reaccustom themselves to dealing with terrestrial gravity. This serves as a model for the amount and type of activity astronauts could perform in their first hours on Mars. "What you can and can't assume the crew can do in the first day is a huge driver of the mass of the mission," Robinson said. That's because more impaired astronauts need more equipment; more equipment increases mission costs.

Right now, returning astronauts touch down in Kazakhstan, where it's difficult to run the types of tests NASA would want. And crewed SpaceX capsules will land in the ocean, where waves will interfere with the transition back to gravity. So for this type of test, NASA will have to wait until Boeing Starliner capsules are making their returns, which will be on land.

A final type of analog scenario involving the ISS is easier to implement, thanks to a recent upgrade to the station's computer facilities. These scenarios tackle the challenges of communication during a Mars mission.

Two such types of challenges face would-be Mars visitors: the sheer amount of time needed to hear back from colleagues on Earth during a time-sensitive situation and the occasional communications blackout, which would last up to two weeks. The latter is trickier to mimic on the space station, but practices that NASA already uses to prepare for spacewalks could become the basis for Mars blackout procedures, Robinson said.

And a recent computer update means that NASA can now implement a virtual communications lag that will allow everyone involved in a mission to practice dealing with such a distance from Earth. Right now, Robinson said, NASA is ready for scientists to develop specific scenarios to use that technology. "We don't want to just use it for a day for fun."

Having fun isn't a good way to mimic a Mars mission anyway, she added. "Think of a crew boarding that vehicle and waving goodbye and then being just the four of them for the next possibly three years," Robinson said. "That first leg of it, that first year, is like the worst family vacation you've ever imagined, because there's nothing to do."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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A Journey to Mars Starts on the Space Station - Space.com

WEATHERFORD, Okla. (KFOR) A legendary Soviet cosmonauts personal space flight artifacts are on display at the Stafford Air and Space Museum in Weatherford.

Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov died on Oct. 11 from an ongoing illness.

But a part of his legacy remains through his own personal artifacts on display at the Stafford Air and Space Museum, named for Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, in Weatherford, Okla, a Stafford Air and Space Museum news release states.

Leonov donated artifacts from his personal collection to the museum to honor the close friendship he shared with Stafford.

Leonov twice decorated with his countrys top honor, the Hero of the Soviet Union was the first human to walk in space.

The highly accomplished cosmonaut commanded the Soviet side of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, which was the final flight for the Apollo program, and the first spaceflight in which spacecraft from different nations docked in space.

The United States and the Soviet Union were bitter rivals during the space race years that preceded the Apollo-Soyuz mission.

Leonov and Stafford, the Apollos commander, became close friends as they prepared for the mission, according to the news release.

The Soviet Cosmonaut and Western Oklahoma boy had a special bond from the very beginning. Their friendship turned the unlikely duo into lifelong friends; both becoming more like brothers. Alexei visited the Stafford Museum on several occasions, and many community members had the privilege of meeting the diplomat, the news release states.

Leonov honored his friendship with Stafford by donating a handful of significant personal items over the years to the museum, including his actual museum uniform.

Those precious items are now on display at the museum.

In the Apollo-Soyuz gallery, a life-size mannequin of Major General Alexei Leonov stands dressed in his actual flown cosmonaut in-flight garment that he wore during the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the news release states.

The museums gallery also contains many other Russian treasures, including a triple barrel gun that Leonov gave to Stafford.

The same type of gun was carried aboard the Soviet spacecraft as part of their survival kits, the news release states.

An NK-33 rocket engine is the museums most recent Russian collection acquisition. The NK-33 was the highest performing liquid oxygen/kerosene engine ever built. It was designed to power the giant N-1 moon rocket the Soviet competitor to the American Saturn V rocket, according to the news release.

The Stafford Air and Space Museum is the only facility in the world to have the main propulsion engines from both the Soviet and U.S. moon rockets, the news release states.

The museums connection to the Russian space program will continue beyond Leonovs death.

The museum will continue to share the story of the two unlikely comrades that aided in one of the most significant collaborations in history, showing that cooperation between countries of diverse nature could work, and that nations could come together for the greater good, forever impacting the future of spaceflight, the news release states.

The Stafford Air and Space Museum is one of only three Smithsonian Affiliate museums in Oklahoma. Click here for more museum information.

The museum is open seven days a week.

Read the rest here:

Historic space flight artifacts donated by legendary cosmonaut displayed at space museum in Weatherford - KFOR Oklahoma City

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 28: Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Galactic, gives the thumbs up ... [+] after ringing a ceremonial bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to promote the first day of trading of Virgin Galactic Holdings shares on October 28, 2019 in New York City. Virgin Galactic Holdings became the first space-tourism company to go public as it began trading on Monday with a market value of about $1 billion. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

This week, Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company launched by billionaire Sir Richard Branson in 2004, made its first appearance on stock markets. Virgin Galactic Holdings began trading on Monday, October 28 on the NYSE as SPCE. (Branson also had another, less-publicized triumph this week when his Virgin Trains was approved to sell $3.25 billion in bonds to create a Las Vegas-California high speed train line.)

Over 9 million shares changed hands on October 28. The stock, which hit a high of 12.93 on its launch date, has since fallen back to earth somewhat, closing on October 30 at 10.61. The stock price is a fraction of the $250,000 cost to consumers of a future Virgin Galactic flight.

Today is the start of a new era for the human spaceflight industry, said Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, in a statement timed to the beginning of stock trading. Now that VG is a publicly traded company, anyone can invest in a human spaceflight company that is striving to truly transform the market and be part of the excitement of the commercial space industry.

The company did not reach stock market orbit as a hot IPO, but through a reverse merger with Social Capital Hedosophia. The company is to all intents and purposes a pre-revenue startup; it just happens to be public having merged with a listed cash shell, according to Seeking Alpha, which rated the company Neutral. Right now it has no fundamentals - no revenue, no earnings, no commercial operations.

What Virgin Galactic does have is 15 years of research and development in manned suborbital flight. These tourist jaunts are based on a reusable vehicle being launched from a mothership and zooming up to 300,000 feet.

Virgin Galactic says there is a path to profit, from such space tourists flights according to a presentation to the Securities and Exchange Commission reviewed by Space.com. Projections included a $104 million loss in 2020 while Virgin Galactic launches its space tourism program, near break-even operations by 2021 and a projected $274 million in earnings by 2023.

So what, exactly, is Virgin Galactic selling? Its not just a couple of weightless minutes in space, but the experience of it all, a concept that millions of potential Millennial customers apparently crave.

As a Virgin investor relations release put it, Using its proprietary and reusable technologies, and supported by a distinctive, Virgin-branded customer experience, [Virgin] is developing a spaceflight system designed to offer customers a unique, multi-day experience culminating in a spaceflight that includes several minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth from space.

Virgin Galactic reaches space for the first time during its 4th powered flight from Mojave, Calif. ... [+] The aircraft called VSS Unity reached an altitude of 271,268 feet reaching the lower altitudes of space. (AP Photo/Matt Hartman)

To get customers there, Virgin Galactic has developed its reusable SpaceShipTwo spaceflight system.It consists of WhiteKnightTwo, a custom-built, four engine, dual-fuselage carrier aircraft. At 45,000 feet, WhiteKnight will launch its load, SpaceShipTwo, for a rocket-powered journey to the edge of space.

SpaceShipTwo is a reusable, winged spacecraft designed to carry eight people (including two pilots) into space.Its powered by a hybrid rocket moter which Virgin Galactic says combines the simplicity of a solid-fuel motor with the easier control of a liquid rocket motor. SpaceShipTwos wings and tail boomsare designed to rotate upwards while in space, feathering like a badminton shuttlecock to help create a safe glide to re-entry.

The prospect of the experience around of space flight has excited many. More than 600 people, reportedly including Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, have put down a combined $80 million in deposits on prospective $250,000 spaceflights.

However, Seeking Alpha notes that The space tourism company isn't due to begin operations until June of 2020. If true, that will be twelve years, and well over a billion dollars in investment, after an originally announced date of 2008.

Is there a market for what Virgin Galactic is offering? According to the Swiss investment bank UBS, the space tourism industry will grow by more than 10% a year to be worth about $3 billion dollars by 2030.

As an investment, a company with no revenue and no track record of sending astronauts into space is certainly highly speculative. But potential investors might find it interesting to note that Boeing recently put $20 million into the company as well. A Boeing spokesperson said its work with Virgin Galactic will help unlock the future of space travel and high-speed mobility, potentially pointing towards high-speed international travel.

Or, as the irrepressible Sir Richard Branson put it, "This is the beginning of an important collaboration for the future of air and space travel, which are the natural next steps for our human spaceflight program.

TOPSHOT - Virgin Galactic's SpaceshipTwo takes off for a suborbital test flight on December 13, ... [+] 2018, in Mojave, California. - Virgin Galactic marked a major milestone on Thursday as its spaceship made it to a peak height, or apogee, of 51.4 miles (82.7 kilometers), after taking off attached to an airplane from Mojave, California, then firing its rocket motors to reach new heights. (Photo by Gene Blevins / AFP) (Photo credit should read GENE BLEVINS/AFP/Getty Images)

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Virgin Galactic: From Space To The Stock Market - Forbes

Richard Branson rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on October 28 as Virgin Galactic became the first commercial spaceflight company to list on the stock market. It was valued at more than US$1 billion following its merger with publicly-listed holding firm Social Capital Hedosophia, then experienced a 20% drop in its share price after a week of trading. It is now worth around US$800m.

The route to success in the space tourism industry is bound to be a wild ride and Branson is hoping his first mover advantage will bring healthy returns in the long run. Indeed, this high-risk venture could well pay off - it's just a question of when.

Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 to offer paying customers a trip into suborbital space. For US$250,000, anyone can take a 90-minute flight into the upper reaches of the atmosphere where they will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth's surface. According to Virgin, 600 people from some 60 countries have already made their reservations, while a further 3,700 people have registered for the opportunity to buy flights once ticket sales are back on offer. This suggests that the combination of Branson's marketing prowess and the allure of space for humans are a plausible value proposition for investors.

Virgin is also offering a much cheaper route to experiencing space than its competitors. There have only been seven space tourists to date and none since 2009. All travelled on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) at a reported price tag of tens of millions of dollars.

NASA announced in June that it would offer trips to the ISS at a cost of US$35,000 per night, not including the cost of a taxi ride there from SpaceX and Boeing. The cost of these rides is likely to be at least US$60m, which is what NASA pays to take its astronauts to the ISS, and these visits are due to start in 2020. In September 2018, SpaceX unveiled its 2023 lunar passenger flight that would take Japanese billionaire businessman Yusaku Maezawa and six of his guests on a space flight around the moon using its Big Falcon Rocket for an undisclosed, but certainly a very substantial, price.

Substantial progressAlthough it has yet to fly any paying passengers and is currently loss making, Virgin Galactic aims to be profitable by 2021, based on completing 115 flights that generate US$210m in revenue. By 2023, it is forecasting revenues of US$590m and expects to have flown more than 3,000 passengers. Since that number is a tiny portion of the target market of high net-worth individuals with assets of at least US$10m, its projections could well be achievable. And, currently, Virgin Galactic appears to be ahead of Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin in fulfilling the vision of space tourism.

While Virgin Galactic has failed to deliver on expectations in the past - it missed its own targets for flights commencing and experienced a catastrophic accident in 2014 - it has more recently made substantial progress. In December 2018 it achieved its first suborbital space flight. Given that achievement and subsequent progress, it seems likely that commercial flights could commence within the next 18 months.

It is also diversifying its offering as it gears up for launch. In collaboration with the sportswear maker Under Armour, Virgin Galactic has developed a line of high-tech clothing that its passengers will wear on their flights. At the same time, it is moving into its new facilities at Spaceport America in the desert lands of New Mexico.

Spaceport America, where Virgin's flights will take off from and return to, has a US$220m investment by the New Mexico government. It is also here that passengers will undergo three days of training to prepare for the G-forces and weightlessness that they will experience on flights.

The business of space tourism is only just beginning. Air travel similarly started small with a limited target market, but grew to become a mass market with many commercial air carriers and millions travelling every month, served by airports that over time became large commercial hubs. The trajectory for space tourism travel in the decades to come has the potential to be similar. From a highly niche market, it can become one that has much broader appeal when costs reduce.

At the same time, spaceports can, like airports before them, become large concentrated centres of commercial activity. Should Virgin Galactic maintain its first mover advantage in space tourism in the years ahead, there is the prospect for healthy returns to investors in this high risk venture.

Related LinksVirgin GalacticSpace Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

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Virgin Galactic's high-risk space adventure will likely pay off - Space Daily

Sinequas intelligent search platform will empower NASA Marshall Space Flight Center to explore NASAs Information Galaxies

Science Applications International Corp. and Sinequa, a leader in AI-powered search and analytics, are working together to deliver an intelligent search experience with Sinequas advanced natural language processing and machine learning technologies for NASAs global information access capability at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

SAIC, recently awarded a contract to deploy and sustain a global knowledge management capability for NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, chose Sinequas insight engine to help search and analyze NASAs structured and unstructured content while improving the search experience, which supports missions and operations.

Marketing Technology News: Shadowfencing Redefines Proximity Targeting for Leading Brands Across the US

Organizations like NASA have been looking at how to utilize decades of information and reports and to extract valuable insights from those data stores. In the past, knowledge managers and corporate librarians helped with that process but now tools such as Sinequas AI-powered search technologies are providing these insights using machine learning, state of the art natural language processing and knowledge mining, stated Dave Schubmehl, Research Director, AI Software Platforms, Content Analytics and Search at IDC. At IDC, we see this as an emerging trend to improve the search and information finding and use experience across a broad range of industries and government agencies.

Marketing Technology News: b8ta Announces $50 Million Series C and Launches Ark

We are excited to work with Sinequa on this important contract. Using its knowledge management platform, we are helping NASA to access and utilize decades worth of information, said Bob Genter, SAIC executive vice president and general manager of the Civilian Markets Customer Group. By better connecting NASAs workforce to digital content, we can help them deliver on critical space missions.

To be selected by such a well-known and a highly-regarded organization to provide a solution to the experts at NASA is thrilling, said Xavier Pornain, senior vice president, North America at Sinequa. Together with SAIC, Sinequas powerful search and analytics technology will unlock NASAs galactic treasure trove of information and make it actionable to the engineers and scientists who are planning future missions.

Marketing Technology News: Acoustic Collaborates With GBG to Accelerate Marketing Transformation

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SAIC and Sinequa Align to Deliver an Intelligent Search Experience to NASA Marshall Space Flight Center SAIC and Sinequa Align to Deliver an...

WASHINGTON Both SpaceX and NASA have ideas about how to get humans to the Red Planet, but the founder of the Mars Society says there's a better way to do it.

In a colorful talk here at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) on Oct. 23, Robert Zubrin made the case for his long-standing "Mars Direct" plan. Mars Direct, Zubrin argued, makes more sense than SpaceX's current Starship architecture and the plans of NASA, which may use the Gateway lunar space station as a staging point for human Mars missions.

Mars Direct, which Zubrin first proposed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, calls for an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) that launches uncrewed to Mars and arrives at the Red Planet six months later. Aboard this spacecraft will be a nuclear-powered rover that generates rocket fuel from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere. This rover's work will ensure that the ERV's fuel tank is topped up on the Red Planet.

Related: How Living on Mars Could Challenge Colonists (Infographic)More: Space News from the 70th International Astronautical Congress

Two more spacecraft would launch from Earth to Mars at the next available window, 26 months after the ERV took flight: a second ERV, and a habitat carrying the astronauts.

The crew then would spend 18 months on Mars before returning to Earth. Half a year later, they would arrive back on their home planet, and the next ERV and habitat combination would already be flying to the Red Planet, Zubrin suggested.

But this plan is not what SpaceX or NASA want to do, Zubrin said in his talk.

SpaceX's Starship has gone through multiple design and name changes since company founder and CEO Elon Musk unveiled the basic architecture in September 2016 under the moniker "Interplanetary Transport System."

The latest iteration features a reusable spaceship and rocket called Starship and Super Heavy, respectively, that will stand 387 feet (118 meters) tall when stacked. Starship will be powered by six of SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engines, and Super Heavy will have slots for 37 Raptors (though some of these slots may be empty on operational missions).

Super Heavy will launch Starship to orbit, then come back down for landing and reuse. Starship, meanwhile, will fuel up in Earth orbit and zoom off to Mars. It will land on the Red Planet, be refueled there using local resources (as in the Mars Direct vision) and eventually launch off the Martian surface to come back toward Earth.

Related: SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy Mars Rocket in Pictures

"In short, this is the wrong way to use a Starship," Zubrin told a standing-room-only crowd at the conference, arguing that the propellant requirements would be excessive for such a large vehicle. Instead, he said, "Starship could be used as a fully reusable Earth to LEO [low Earth orbit] heavy-lift vehicle." And from there, payloads could stage off Starship to head to Mars.

Zubrin proposed using another spacecraft a sort of mini-Starship to "stage off of Starship." It would be sized to be a fully reusable upper stage of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. Zubrin said this would reduce the fuel requirements sixfold. "So, rather than being a 120-ton-to-orbit kind of vehicle, it's a 20-ton-to-orbit vehicle," he explained.

Zubrin said that NASA could then work to build a Mars lander to help Musk's Starship plans, since "Starship is all he's doing." Zubrin further suggested that NASA could develop a 10-ton or more "Mars-class lander" that could be sent off of Starship or the Space Launch System, the giant rocket that NASA is developing to send crews to the moon and Mars.

While NASA's plans for a Mars mission around 2035 are still under development, the agency has proposed using a deep-space transport spacecraft, a reusable vehicle that can use both chemical and electric propulsion. This craft would cycle between the Gateway and Mars, bringing cargo and astronauts back and forth as required.

Using the Gateway would allow the transport spacecraft to be "serviced and sent out again" to the Red Planet, NASA argued in a 2017 description. Gateway would also be a natural gathering spot to foster international and private partnerships, which NASA is trying to achieve for cost and multilateral support as the agency works to land humans on the moon by 2024.

Zubrin argued that the agency should reconsider this approach. "The reason they are building the lunar orbit Gateway is because we don't have a heavy Mars lander," Zubrin said in the IAC talk. "You don't solve that by building a lunar orbit Gateway. You solve that by building a heavy Mars lander."

He also said that using Gateway would add more time to a Mars mission, because astronauts would have to go the moon-orbiting outpost first.

In a news conference at IAC the following day (Oct. 24), NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agency is considering several architectures for human Mars missions (without getting into specifics about which ones are under consideration). He said a 2033 or 2035 mission could be possible "if the budgets were to materialize," and one possible scenario might include a Venus gravity assist to go faster. The agency is also looking at scenarios where astronauts would spend 30 days on the Martian surface before going home, or making a two-year Red Planet stay, depending on what resources are available.

Zubrin brought up a few alternative architectures for the plan that he's heard from the community, including the idea of sending Starship to the moon before going to Mars.

"Sending a Starship to the moon is like sending a carrier aircraft whitewater rafting. It's the wrong spot for it," Zubrin said to audience laughter. One issue would be the amount of ejecta Starship would produce in the lunar environment, which could not only damage any lunar settlement nearby, but the Starship itself, he said.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Originally posted here:

Mars Society Founder Makes Case for 'Mars Direct' Path to the Red Planet - Space.com

There are actually quite a few technologies in the movies that have some real-life counterparts. Were beginning to see roboticists build machines that move around and operate like droids. Biotech engineers are developing high-tech prosthetics to replace or augment lost or damaged limbs. People are using holograms more and more in many different industries (especially in medicine). And humanity continues its never-ending pursuit to make the flying car happen.

Unfortunately, when it comes to space technology, Star Wars takes liberties to new extremes. There is practically nothing real about its depiction of spaceflight. In real life, getting a single rocket off the surface of Earth and into space takes an excruciating amount of power and effort. Its a process where a zillion things could go wrong and lead to catastrophic failure. And ships dont move like airplanes in the vacuum of space.

To be fair, there are some aspects presented in Star Wars (and other works of science fiction) that scientists and engineers want to make into reality. One of the best examples is the artificial gravity depictedinside these ships. The lack of gravity in space can cause a host of problems for human bodies, and artificial gravity could help mitigate these effects.

In Star Wars, whether its on a space station as giant as the Death Star or inside a craft as small as an X-wing, the artificial gravity is just there, like some kind of ether. It makes no sense.

Still, many experts think we could simulate gravity in space by generating a high amount of centripetal force, la 2001: A Space Odyssey.The closest humans have ever come to producing this effect was during NASAs Gemini 8 mission in 1966, and this was only because an accident induced a high acceleration that forced the mission to terminate early.Later that year, Gemini 11 attempted to produce artificial gravity through rotation. The effect was too small to be felt by the astronauts onboard, although small objects were seen falling toward the end of the capsule.

While artificial gravity is not a high priority right now for anybody, experts continue to pitch new proposals for studying its implementation. Were likely to see them taken more seriously as we pursue more long-duration missions. The general idea that you could simulate terrestrial gravity in a spacecraft is not unthinkable. It just requires a lot of smart engineering and the type of money and resources that exceed some countries annual GDPs.

Excerpt from:

Are there any realistic spaceflight technologies from Star Wars? - MIT Technology Review

Every day, Wall Street analysts upgrade some stocks, downgrade others, and "initiate coverage" on a few more. But do these analysts even know what they're talking about? Today, we're taking one high-profile Wall Street pick and putting it under the microscope...

New space tourism company Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) says that after reverse merging into shell company Social Capital Hedosophialast week, it in effect created "the World's First and Only Publicly Traded Commercial Human Spaceflight Company."

To one analyst on Wall Street, that fact alone is reason enough to buy the stock.

This morning, investment banker Vertical Research announced it is initiating coverage of Virgin Galactic with a $20 price target and a buy rating -- the first such Wall Street firm to do so.

Vertical cited two main reasons for endorsing Virgin Galactic. The first is that simple fact that at present, Virgin Galactic is the only pure play on human spaceflight that an individual investor can invest in, anywhere in the world. Sure, there are other ways to invest in spaceflight:

And there are also other pure plays on manned spaceflight, such as Blue Origin or SpaceX -- but neither of those is currently publicly traded.

Virgin Galactic is.

And yet, more than a week after Virgin Galactic began trading on the NYSE, no one else on Wall Street has recommended buying the stock. Why is that?

Investors got a good look at some of those potential reasons last week, when the company filed an 8-K with the SEC describing a few of its key financial metrics.

In that report, Virgin revealed that, for example, it has very little revenue at present -- only about $2.4 million in sales booked over the past six months -- and that it's losing a lot of money as it prepares to begin commercial operations ($96.4 million in net losses accrued year to date).

Of course, this is all probably to be expected.

Already, Virgin Galactic has arguably proven its spacecraft capable of flying well-heeled tourists to the edge of space and returning them to Earth safely. It's taken in some $81.1 million in prepayments from more than 600 would-be passengers. However, Virgin doesn't get to book those payments as revenue until it actually provides the service for which the passengers have paid -- and after pushing its launch date once again last month, the company now says it doesn't expect to begin commercial operation until next year.

In Vertical Research's opinion, this may be the real reason investors have shown themselves to be leery of Virgin Galactic stock: Until the company flies a bunch of tourists to space and brings them back safely, there's going to be a lingering suspicion that itcannot. And perhaps this is the real reason why after Virgin's shares began trading, theyended last week down 18%.

That's a steep hit to take so early in the space game, but as Vertical Research explains today in a note covered by TheFly.com, if what investors are worried about is Virgin's "technical" ability to successfully build and fly a spaceship for space tourism, well, that risk is "less draconian than the stock appears to be pricing in."

Over the past five years, multiple successful test flights since the crash that destroyed the company's first SpaceShipTwo in 2014 have gone off without a hitch. And if Virgin is delaying its first commercial flight a bit longer than investors might like, well, if it's doing this out of an abundance of caution, then that's not something to criticize -- but to applaud.

Mind you, I don't know that I'm 100% convinced that Vertical is right to value Virgin Galactic shares at $20 -- I'm going to need to see proof of the revenue the company can make, and proof that it can be made profitably before I make that call. But as far as the technical risk goes, I agree with Vertical Research on this one:

Virgin Galactic stock at less than $10 looks like a good bet to me -- and I'd bet that as soon as that first commercial flight breaks above the Karman line, shares will go higher.

Read the original:

Virgin Galactic Stock Finds Its First Fan on Wall Street - Motley Fool

The twin Voyager probes are the ultimate spaceflight overachievers, but everyone knows their run can't last forever.

Right now, it's looking like the grizzled spacefarers have about five years before they fall silent, when they'll be no longer able to send word of their adventures back to the humans who have eagerly awaited their telegrams for 42 years and counting. The Voyagers' journey will continue indefinitely, but we will no longer travel with them.

"It's cooling off, the spacecraft is getting colder all the time and the power is dropping," Ed Stone, the mission's project scientist and a physicist at Caltech, said during a news conference held Oct. 31 in conjunction with the publication of a handful of new scientific papers. "We know that somehow, in another five years or so, we may not have enough power to have any scientific instruments on any longer."

Related: Voyager 2's Interstellar Trip Deepens Mysteries Beyond Solar System

Their success is unprecedented, even by NASA standards; the mission has lasted for two-thirds of the agency's existence. "We're certainly surprised but also wonderfully excited by the fact that they do [still work]," Stone said. "When the two Voyagers were launched, the Space Age was only 20 years old, so it was hard to know at that time that anything could last over 40 years."

Just as stunning as the spacecraft's longevity has been the longevity of a handful of instruments on board the probes. Four instruments on Voyager 1 continue to work; their twins and a fifth instrument are still gathering data on Voyager 2.

Stamatios Krimigis, a space scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the principal investigator of the mission's low-energy charged particles experiment, explained that the devices were designed to last just four years, during which they would need to conduct 250,000 turns of a motor (dubbed "steps") to take measurements. Both versions of the experiment are still running.

"That device has been stepping every 192 seconds for the last 42 years," Krimigis said during the news conference. "It's close to 8 million steps, and we're absolutely amazed that it's still working."

The Voyager spacecraft launched two weeks apart in 1977, taking slightly different trajectories past Jupiter and Saturn. Then, the probes parted ways. Voyager 1 scouted out Saturn's moon Titan and then made a beeline out of our solar system; Voyager 2 took a more leisurely route, giving humans our only look at Uranus and Neptune.

Related: NASA's Voyager 2 Went Interstellar the Same Day a Solar Probe Touched the Sun

Their longevity has translated to speed and distance that are difficult to fathom. Both spacecraft are traveling at more than 30,000 mph (48,000 km/h). On NASA's tracking page for the mission, each spacecraft's odometer ticks up by 10 miles (16 kilometers) or more twice a second, a constant churn that makes the passage of time suddenly excruciating.

But the Voyagers are traveling at nowhere near the speed of light (186,000 mps, or 300,000 km/s), as their messages do. And yet, it takes nearly 17 hours for messages from Voyager 2 to travel back to Earth and more than 20 hours for those sent by Voyager 1. A whole meme cycle can roil the internet here on Earth between a message's dispatch and its arrival.

The probes' distance only makes them more compelling emissaries. A year ago, the mission checked off yet another achievement when Voyager 2 followed its twin through the bubble that surrounds our solar system. In just a couple of hours, Voyager 2 went from being surrounded by material born in the sun to being bathed by the local neighborhood a transition Voyager 1 had made in 2012.

Stone and Krimigis spoke to mark the publication of the first batch of scientific papers comparing the two crossings. The twin spacecraft's transitions to interstellar space have been similar but not identical, variations on a theme that humans have no concrete plans to experience again anytime soon. Unless something very dramatic happens in the universe around us, Pluto veteran New Horizons, like the Pioneer spacecraft before it, will fall silent long before it escapes our little bubble.

What the Voyager mission has made clear, the scientists speaking at the news conference said, is that two crossings are hardly enough to begin understanding this bubble and that, nevertheless, the spacecraft have completely changed what we know about it.

"We had no good quantitative idea of how big this bubble is that the sun creates around itself," Stone said. "We didn't know how large the bubble was, and we certainly didn't know that the spacecraft could live long enough to reach the edge of the bubble and leave the bubble and enter interstellar space, at least nearby interstellar space."

And now, of course, they do.

"This has really been a wonderful journey," Stone said.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct a value for the speed of light. Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Read more from the original source:

NASA's Voyager Spacecraft May Have 5 Years Left to Explore Interstellar Space - Space.com

Enlarge / Technicians at NASAs Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans moved the Space Launch System's liquid hydrogen tank from the factory to the dock, where it was loaded onto the Pegasus barge on Dec. 14, 2018.

NASA/Steven Seipel

After the Senate Appropriations Committee released its fiscal year 2020 budget bill in September, the White House Office of Management and Budget responded with a letter to share some "additional views" on the process. This letter (see a copy), dated October 23 and signed by acting director of the White House budget office Russell Vought, provides some insight into NASA's large Space Launch System rocket.

Congress has mandated that NASA use the more costly SLS booster to launch the ambitious Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter in the early 2020s, while the White House prefers the agency to fly on a much-less-expensive commercial rocket. In a section discussing the Clipper mission, Vought's letter includes a cost estimate to build and fly a single SLS rocket in a given yearmore than $2 billionwhich NASA has not previously specified.

"The Europa mission could be launched by a commercial rocket," Vought wrote to the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Alabama Republican Richard Shelby. "At an estimated cost of over $2 billion per launch for the SLS once development is complete, the use of a commercial launch vehicle would provide over $1.5 billion in cost savings. The Administration urges the Congress to provide NASA the flexibility called for by the NASA Inspector General."

Independent estimates have pegged the SLS cost this high, but NASA has never admitted it. A $2 billion cost to launch one SLS rocket a year raises significant questions about the sustainability of such an exploration programthe government killed the similarly sized Saturn V rocket in the early 1970s because of unsustainable costs.

The letter also references a report published by NASA's Inspector General Paul Martin last May, which recommended that NASA scientists and engineers, rather than Congress, choose the best rocket for their science mission to Jupiter's Moon Europa. This report, however, placed a much lower cost estimate on the SLS rocket. It stated that "NASA officials estimate the third SLS Block 1 launch vehicles marginal cost will be at least $876 million."

This discrepancy can likely be explained by the difference between marginal costs and marginal plus fixed costs. Martin's estimate is for "marginal" cost alone, meaning how much it would cost NASA to build an additional rocket in a given year. This likely does not apply to the Europa Clipper mission, however, as NASA would like to launch the Clipper spacecraft in 2023 or 2024, a time when the SLS rocket's core stage contractor, Boeing, will probably not be capable of building more than one booster a year.

The real cost for an SLS rocket should therefore include fixed costssuch factory space at NASA's Michoud Assembly in Louisiana, the workforce, and all of the other costs beyond a rocket's metal and other physical components. In other words, if you are only capable of building and flying one rocket a year, the total price must include fixed and marginal costs, which brings the SLS cost to "over $2 billion."

The political wrangling over the launch vehicle has put NASA and the Clipper mission planners at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California in a difficult position. There are basically three different rides to Jupiter, and each would involve modifications to the spacecraft. To make a 2023 launch, the Clipper's design really needs to be locked down soon.

The powerful SLS booster offers the quickest ride for the six-ton spacecraft to Jupiter, less than three years. But for mission planners, there are multiple concerns about this rocket beyond just its extraordinary cost. There is the looming threat that the program may eventually be canceled (due to its cost and the emergence of significantly lower cost, privately built rockets). NASA's human exploration program also has priority on using the SLS rocket, so if there are manufacturing issues, a science mission might be pushed aside. Finally, there is the possibility of further developmental delayssignificant ground testing of SLS has yet to begin.

Another option is United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket, which has an excellent safety record and has launched several high-profile missions for NASA. However, this rocket requires multiple gravity assists to push the Clipper into a Jupiter orbit, including a Venus flyby. This heating would add additional thermal constraints to the mission, and scientists would prefer to avoid this if at all possible.

A final possibility is SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, with a kick stage. This booster would take a little more than twice as long as the SLS rocket to get the Clipper payload to Jupiter, but it does not require a Venus flyby and therefore avoids those thermal issues. With a track record of three successful flights, the Falcon Heavy also avoids some of the development and manufacturing concerns raised by SLS vehicle. Finally, it offers the lowest cost of the three options.

In the end, however, the rocket decision will probably not come down to technical and cost considerations. Politics, rather, will have the final say. And the Senator to whom Vought's letter was addressed, Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), has championed the SLS rocket for nearly a decade. (The vehicle is designed and managed at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, his home state). So for NASA to get its Europa mission, which the science community generally agrees is a high priority due to the presence of a large water ocean beneath the Moon's icy surface, taxpayers may have to pay an additional $1.5 billion to placate a powerful policymaker.

View original post here:

The White House puts a price on the SLS rocketand it's a lot - Ars Technica

The race is on to find life in other places in the Solar System, from underground reservoirs on Mars to the subsurface oceans on Europa and Enceladus.

If spacecraft, rovers or even astronauts make the momentous discovery of life on another world, thatll just open up new questions. Did it originate all on its own, completely independently from Earth, or are we somehow related? And if we are related, how long ago did our evolutionary trees branch away from each other.

Even though Mars is millions of kilometers away, it could be possible that were still related thanks to the concept of Panspermia; the idea that meteor impacts could transfer rocks and maybe even living creatures from world to world.

But could you go one step further? If we find life on another star system, could we discover that were actually related to them too? Is Galactic Panspermia possible?

Our Book is out!

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References:

https://www.hoyle.org.uk/resources/virusesfromspacecompressed.pdf

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lpi/meteorites/The_Meteorite.shtml

https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/03211549-lpsc-hermean-meteorite.html

https://www.dlr.de/me/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-1752/2384_read-54290/

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Humanoid

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-timescale-evolution-life-earth.html

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.0101.pdf

https://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2013/20130926-gravity-assist.html

https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.0101

https://phys.org/news/2010-11-necropanspermia-seeding-life-earth.html

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/198/3/723/1012846

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.06414.pdf

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-observes-1st-confirmed-interstellar-comet/

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/476/3/3031/4909830

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/hyakutake.html

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NASA Has a New Method For Cooling Down Electronics Crammed Together in a Spacecraft - Universe Today

Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, speaks Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington. Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now

Blue Origin has partnered with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to build elements of the companys human-rated lunar lander, and Draper will lead development of the landers avionics and guidance systems, with an aim to be ready to land a crew on the moon by 2024, company founder Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday.

In the first major update on the companys lander program since May, Bezos said Blue Origin has assembled a national team of aerospace contractors to develop, build and fly the three-stage spacecraft, which is based on Blue Origins previous work on the Blue Moon landing system.

Blue Origin is the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin is building the ascent stage, Northrop Grumman is building the transfer element and Draper is doing the GNC (guidance, navigation and control), Bezos said Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington. We could not ask for better partners. Blue Origin, in addition to being the prime, is going to build the descent element.

Blue Origin is competing for a NASA contract to develop a crewed lunar lander, or Human Landing System, for the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by the end of 2024.

During his presentation Tuesday, Bezos emphasized that bold ambitions in space require the support of an industry, and not individual companies.

This is a national team for a national priority, said Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin. I could not be more excited to be doing it with these partners. This is the kind of thing thats so ambitious that it needs to be done with partners. This is the only way to get back to the moon fast, and this time were not going back to the moon to visit, were going back to the moon to stay.

The three-element landers descent stage will be powered by Blue Origins throttleable BE-7 engine, which burns super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. The Northrop Grumman-made transfer vehicle will also use the BE-7 engine, Bezos said.

While Blue Origin did not confirm plans to use NASAs planned Gateway station in lunar orbit, the inclusion of a transfer module indicates the company intends to use the the mini-space station as a staging base for landing missions. Under NASAs approach, astronauts will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida inside an Orion crew capsule on top of the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, then dock with the Gateway and board their moon lander.

The transfer module would guide the lander from the Gateways high lunar orbit closer to the moon, where the landing module will begin a powered descent to the surface.

Bezos did not discuss the propulsion system for the reusable ascent module, made by Lockheed Martin, where astronauts will ride during the lunar landing and the launch off of the moon. Lockheed Martin will leads crewed flight operations and training for the lander, and a company spokesperson said the ascent module will incorporate technology Lockheed Martin has developed for the Orion crew capsule.

The reusable ascent module element will be capable of multiple trips to and from the moon.

Lockheed Martin has been honored to help NASA explore space for more than 50 years, providing deep space robotic missions, planetary landers, space shuttle heritage and the Orion exploration spacecraft,said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president for Lockheed Martins space business.We value Blue Origins thoughtful approach to developing human-rated flight systems, and are thrilled to be part of a national team with this mix of innovation and experience. We look forward to safely and sustainably returning our nation to the surface of the moon by 2024.

Lockheed Martin is, as far as I know, the only company that actually lands on the surface of Mars, Bezos said. They are unbelievably competent in space. They are experts in life support systems, so to have their expertise on the ascent element is a really big deal.

Northrop Grumman, through its predecessorGrumman Aircraft Engineering Corp., built the Apollo lunar module that performed six successful landings on the moon with astronauts from 1969 through 1972.

We are one step closer to meeting NASAs goal to get the first American woman and the next American man to the surface of the moon by 2024, said Frank DeMauro, vice president and general manager of Northrop Grummans space systems division. This team brings the best technical and program talent together in the industry to deliver on NASAs ambitious timeline.

Draper is doing the guidance and control, an incredibly complex job for landing on the moon, especially when you want to do a precision landing. Of course, they did that for the original Apollo program way back, but today it will be done in a completely new way, Bezos said.

The Draper guidance system will use computer vision to perform precision landings on the moon using landmarks for navigation, according to Bezos.

When the nation needs precision guidance, it calls on Draper,said Kaigham Gabriel, president and CEO of Draper. We guided Apollo to the moon and back nearly 50 years ago. Were ready to do it again with the Blue Origin team for Artemis.

Bezos also updated test achievements on the new BE-7 engine destined to fly on the lunar lander. The engine, which produces up to 10,000 pounds of thrust, has logged 13 minutes of run time since June, with a longest continuing firing of three minutes.

NASAs deadline for industry proposals for the Human Landing System is Nov. 1. The landers will be developed, owned and operated commercially. NASA plans to select up to four companies for study contracts late this year or in early 2020, then down-select to two contractor teams in late 2020 to proceed with full development of a human-rated lander. Agency officials will later decide which of the two development teams will attempt the first landing in 2024, followed by a second landing mission in 2025.

In the interest of rapid development, NASA has also relaxed requirements for the early human-rated lunar landers to be reusable. NASA eventually wants to reuse landers on missions ferrying astronauts between the moons surface and the Gateway space station in lunar orbit, where the spacecraft could be refueled for multiple landings.

NASA is not planning to conduct an unpiloted demonstration of the lander without astronauts on-board before committing a human crew to a descent to the moon, and the agency will not require the initial set of commercial landers to be based at the Gateway.

NASA has limited the time for companies to submit their proposals to one month.

Thirty days, said Marshall Smith, NASAs director of human lunar exploration programs, during a presentation to a NASA Academies advisory board last month. We know its crazy, but so is 2024, I suppose. So were all working very fast.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

Link:

Bezos says space industry stalwarts will help Blue Origin build moon lander - Spaceflight Now

Army Col. Drew Morgans list of accomplishments is extensive: graduate of West Point and member of the schools title-winning parachute team; ER doctor; battalion surgeon for 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), where he maintained his flight, dive and airborne qualifications; deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa; husband; father ... and NASA astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station.

Yet Morgan, who was hurtling through space at 17,150 miles per hour Wednesday and completed a harrowing 7-hour space walk earlier this month, choked up at the beginning of a live link with students from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Maryland, where he is an alumnus.

Its such an honor to be with you. I have tears in my eyes, Morgan said, holding up a pennant bearing the USUHS logo. The Uniformed Services University is a center of excellence for military medicine, and Im so proud to be a part of your team.

Morgan has been in space since July 20, when he, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano blasted off from Kazakhstan in a Soyuz MS spacecraft. Like all astronauts on the ISS, Morgan is a jack-of-all-trades, conducting spacewalks, working on robotics, repairing the stations systems and managing research.

But on Wednesday, he took time out to discuss what its like to be in space with soon-to-be military physicians.

Commissioned in 1998, Morgans spent several tours overseas, deploying with special operations forces to Afghanistan, Iraq and several African countries. On those deployments, he used his skills as an emergency medical doctor to set bones, stitch wounds and save lives. In space, however, he uses his hands to install refrigerator-sized batteries on the outside of the space station, run experiments and occasionally deals with bumps, bruises and other minor ailments that affect astronauts.

An additional duty is crew medical officer, so when there is a physician on board, obviously Im a natural choice for that," he said.

When hes not conducting long space walks, Morgan largely is doing research, with more than 300 experiments on the ISS, including biological and human studies that have a goal of facilitating medical breakthroughs and understanding the effects of long-duration space travel.

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This past summer, the ISS acquired a biological 3D printer a BioFabrication Facility, or BFF to print human tissue from adult human cells and tissue-derived proteins, with an aim to eventual fabricate complex tissues, like organs, in space where gravity isnt a factor in supporting tissue shapes.

He and his fellow space travelers also are working on experiments using novel protein crystals that show potential for developing cancer medications and medications to fight Alzheimers and Parkinsons, he said.

Theres a lot of relevance for military medicine, Morgan told the students. When we grow tissues in culture on Earth we are required to use a scaffold. With [this] we are able to potentially grow structures we wouldnt be able to do on earth, it has some real potential and applications.

In earlier interviews, Morgan said his interest in space began as a child in Texas, where he saw the space shuttle fly overhead. In fourth grade, he was required to write a letter to a famous Texan; he chose Apollo astronaut Alan Bean, who actually wrote him back, and the seed was planted.

On Wednesday, he told the military medical students he wanted first to be a soldier. Then, while at the U.S. Military Academy, he decided to become a doctor. Finally, after serving with and caring for soldiers, he revisited his childhood dream to become an astronaut. He began training for his current flight since 2013.

Many of the experiments Morgan works on aboard the ISS focus on developing technologies and solutions for longer space missions, including NASAs Artemis program to put the first woman and another man on the Moon by 2024, as well as extended exploration of the lunar surface and eventually, sending astronauts to Mars.

Morgan said it would be doctors in this room who will help guide the medical research and health care needed to care for those future space travelers.

The room you are sitting in is filled with people who are going to help us tackle some of these problems of how we deal with surgical emergencies far away. Is this something well do robotically with remote guidance or is this something that well have a crew member trained ... so they could comfortably perform a surgical operation? I dont know that we know how we are going to deal with that yet, he said.

Since arriving at the ISS, Morgan has conducted three spacewalks, including one on Oct. 6 with fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch, during which he lost some material on the palm of his glove a potential threat to his protective space suits integrity. His tether became snarled on the ISS as he returned after a long day to the airlock, and the pair installed a battery that later was found to be broken.

Morgan said he relies heavily on his special operations training, first during his NASA training, and now, when potentially life-threatening problems occur.

Out-of-the-box thinking is one of the hallmarks of special operations always being the thought leader, on the cutting edge of how to solve problems under ambiguous circumstances with limited resources, Morgan said. [In Special Forces training], humans are more important than hardware. The emphasis is put on our people and developing them. Its something NASA does well and it was part of my operational skill set.

In the audience on Wednesday were two of Morgans former Army medics, Army 2nd Lt. Steve Radloff and Army Master Sgt. Daniel Morissette. Radloff is a 4th year medical student at USUHS; Morissette is in the schools Enlisted to Medical Degree Preparatory Program, hoping attend USUHS next year.

Radloff asked what lessons Morgan learned on crisis management on board the ISS, but Morgan was so excited to hear from him that he forgot the question.

You are some of the finest examples of medical professionals I have ever encountered," he said to his former medics. The greatest honor of my life was serving alongside you guys and many medics just like you. It warms my heart to see you so successful there.

Morissette later said Morgans heartfelt reply to Radloff was just one example of his humility.

Hes always been supportive of me, of what I was trying to achieve, regardless of what he had going on. When I was applying for this program, he was in the midst of his train-up for his launch, and he made time [to help me], Morissette said.

With his wife, Stacey, and four children at home, Morgan has, and will, miss many events while in space: anniversaries, sports games, school achievements, holidays. On Wednesday, Navy Ensign Ted Johnson reminded him he also will miss the Army-Navy football game on Dec. 14.

Good afternoon, Col. Morgan, my name is Ensign Ted Johnson, USU Class of 22, Naval Academy Class of 18, Go Navy, Beat Army, Johnson said.

Not likely, Morgan retorted.

Morgan and Parmitano are scheduled to make five spacewalks in November to repair the ISSs Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS, cosmic-ray detector. All space walks can be watched live on NASA TV.

Read more:

Army astronaut to military medical students: You will solve the health issues of extended space flight - ArmyTimes.com

VSS Unity First Powered Flight, April 5, 2018

Virgin Galactic

Private space tourism is about to go public.

Shareholders approved Virgin Galactic's merger with one of Chamath Palihapitiya's ventures on Wednesday, according to SEC filings, setting up the space tourism company to list directly on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

Virgin Galactic will become the first human spaceflight company to trade on public markets.

The merger was announced in July, with Palihapitiya's Social Capital Hedosophia taking a 49% stake in Virgin Galactic. The merger gives the combined company a valuation of $1.5 billion, with Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson retaining a 51% controlling stake.

Palihapitiya's company already trades on the NYSE, under the ticker IPOA. The filing said the company expects the merger with Virgin to close on Friday. After the closing, the shares will trade under the ticker symbol SPCE at the NYSE on Monday.

Branson hinted to CNBC in an interview last week that Virgin Galactic's public debut was coming soon. "It's not long now," he said during the company's unveiling of its spacewear collection with Under Armour.

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft can carry six passengers and two pilots to the edge of space. The spaceship is dropped from a jet-powered aircraft and fires a rocket motor, reaching over three times the speed of sound as it climbs though Earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft and its passengers then float weightless for a few minutes, before gliding back down to land on Earth much like a traditional aircraft.

A ticket for a Virgin Galactic flight goes for about $250,000 per person, and the company has a list of 603 customers waiting to fly.

Special purpose vehicles, known as SPACs, raise capital to buy an existing company. In Social Capital Hedosophia's case, Palihapitiya's SPAC is buying just under half of the company to help it enter the public market. Palihapitiya is founder of Social Capital and had been an early executive at Facebook.

Read the rest here:

Virgin Galactic is set to trade on the NYSE on Monday as the first space tourism stock - CNBC

Rumor has it, pop star Justin Bieber and actor Leonardo DiCaprio are taking a trip to outer space...

It sounds like a sci-fi movie, but have you heard of Virgin Galactic? Founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, the company has built the worlds first spaceship.

Let me be clear...

Its not just an idea. Its not just a concept. Its not just a glorified airplane.

Its a real, working SPACESHIP tested and approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Last December, this spaceship completed a successful test flight with two astronauts and a passenger on board. It blasted to the edge of earths atmosphere, 51.4 miles up then safely landed just outside Orlando, Florida.

Now, the company is preparing to launch the first commercial space flight in history, which is expected to take off as soon as 2020.

For the first time, civilians will have a chance to shuttle around in outer space.

The good news is you can be one of the first investors to buy the worlds first spaceship stock. And as Ill explain its an investment opportunity you should take seriously, just like these three I told you about before.

Virgin Galactic is an ultra-luxury tourism company, for now...

Virgin Galactic has already sold out its first batch of 600 flight tickets for a hefty fare of $250,000 collecting over $80 million. Another 1,500+ rich folks are on the waiting list.

As I mentioned before, the first passengers include celebrities like pop star Justin Bieber and actor Leonardo DiCaprio

Which led investors to label Virgin Galactic an ultra-luxury tourism company. Ive heard folks compare it to companies renting 300-foot-long yachts or private islands.

But make no mistake, Virgin Galactics ships are much more than a playground for rich people. Thats just step one in its plan to disrupt the space industry.

Space tourism is just a testing ground

Virgin Galactic has a unique business model that will let it earn hundreds of millions of dollars right out of the gate.

As a testing ground, it will sell its space flights to very rich folks as an expensive vacation.

And believe it or not, theres a huge market for this service.

The company says it needs to fly only 1,000 people a year to be a viable business. As I mentioned, there are already 1,500 on its waitlist and the company has barely marketed the concept at all.

If Virgin Galactic pulls this off, it will rake in $250 million in its first year as a public company. Thats 2X more than Amazon and Apple earned in their first years combined, as you can see below

RiskHedge

While the company rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars by pleasing ultra-rich folks, it will quietly start preparing for the next phase of space travel.

Virgin Galactic is coming to disrupt dreaded long-haul flights

Virgin Galactic sees an opportunity to disrupt long-haul travel by flying folks through outer space.

These flights can potentially get you from, say, New York to Tokyo in two hours as opposed to the 14 hours it takes today. And the company is making great strides toward it.

Virgin Galactic has recently joined forces with Boeing, the worlds largest plane-maker. They are developing a commercial spaceship that will travel at 5X the speed of sound 7X faster than todays commercial planes.

Within a decade, space travel will be a $23 billion industry and threaten airlines, according to UBS. And Virgin Galactic is positioned to be the unquestioned leader in this space.

Virgin Galactic is quietly tapping into an $800 billion industry

Air travel is an $800 billion a year industry. UBS estimates the space industry will be worth $805 billion by 2030. And space travel is just a tiny part of it.

Virgin Galactic is planning to use its spaceships to conduct science experiments, launch small satellites, and bring other cargo to space.

The possibilities are endless.

For example, president of Virgin Galactic Will Whitehorn thinks we could put computer servers powering the internet in space quite easily.

You see whats happening?

Most investors dismiss Virgin Galactics space flights as a gimmick. But the company is actually an up-and-coming space giant.

How to buy the worlds first commercial space stock

Earlier this year, Virgin Galactic announced it would merge with Social Capital Hedosophia (IPOA), a publicly traded shell company. The company will buy a 49% stake in Virgin Galactic.

That makes Social Capital Hedosophia the first publicly traded space stock available to the public.

I have to warn you, though.

The upside of this company is limitless. You would be buying into the very early stage of the company as well as the commercial space industry.

Social Capital Hedosophia is worth a little shy of a billion today, and its going after an $800 billion industry. Theres plenty of room for the company to grow 10X or more.

It could be like investing in Boeing right after it rolled the first Boeing 707 out of the hangar in 1957 a moment that changed aviation for good.

That said, Virgin Galactic has a very small margin for error. Any accident threatening human lives could send Virgin Galactic stock plunging down.

My recommendation: Put a small position in this stock, just like I did a couple of months ago. Make it small enough that big a drop in its price wouldnt hurt you badly.

Get our report"The Great Disruptors:3 Breakthrough Stocks Set to Double Your Money".These stocks will hand you 100% gains as they disrupt whole industries.Get your free copy here.

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Now You Can Buy The Worlds First Spaceship Stock - Forbes

WASHINGTON Rocket Lab is shooting for the moon. Literally.

The small-satellite launch startup announced today (Oct. 21) that its new Photon satellite platform will be able to fly small spacecraft on deep-space missions to the moon and beyond. The plan will combine Rocket Lab's workhorse Electron rocket with Photon, a vehicle designed to provide end-to-end spaceflight services for customer payloads.

The move, Rocket Lab says, will allow the company to go beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) and bring "medium, geostationary, and lunar orbiters within reach for small satellites," according to a statement. To reach the moon, the company will add what it calls a "bulk maneuver stage" to the Electron-Photon combo to allow lunar flyby and moon-orbiting missions.

Video: Watch Rocket Lab Launch Its Highest Flight Ever!More: Rocket Lab Gearing Up for 1st Launches from US Soil in Early 2020

NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, and Rocket Lab sees small satellites playing a major role in that effort.

"Small satellites will play a crucial role in science and exploration, as well as providing communications and navigation infrastructure to support returning humans to the moon," Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in the statement. "In the same way we opened access to LEO for smallsats,RocketLabis poised to become the dedicated ride to the Moon and beyond for small satellites."

Rocket Lab unveiled the Photon satellite platform in April at the 35th Space Symposiumin Colorado Springs, Colorado. The vehicle is an evolution of the company's "kick stage," a single-engine craft used to deliver payloads into their final circular orbits around Earth, and is expected carry payloads of up to 375 lbs. (170 kilograms) for up to five years, Rocket Lab has said.

The first Photon mission could fly by late 2020, company representatives said today.

The company's 57-foot-tall (17 meters) Electron booster made its launch debut in 2017 and is designed to launch payloads of up to 500 lbs. (227 kg) into low Earth orbit for $5 million per flight. To date, the company has launched nine missions, including its highest mission yet, which lifted off last week.

That mission, called "As The Crow Flies," lifted off from Rocket Lab's Launch Site 1 on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula on Oct. 17 local time. It delivered a small satellite called Palisade into an orbit 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) above Earth for customer Astro Digital.

Meanwhile, Rocket Lab is busy building its second launchpad, called Launch Site 2, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. The company is also aims to eventually reuse the first stage of its Electron boosters. To do that, it is developing a method to have the booster parachute back to Earth and catch it in mid-air with a helicopter.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Read more here:

Rocket Lab Aims for the Moon and Beyond with New Photon Satellite Platform - Space.com

The China Lunar Exploration Program has released a photo from the Yutu 2 moon rover that reveals the likely nature of a previously unidentified material.

The rover part of the Chang'e 4 mission, which in January completed the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon made the discovery in July. Earlier reports on the few published details captured widespread interest.

The photo taken by Yutu 2's main camera shows the center of a crater containing material that is colored differently than its surroundings and that contains bright spots. The image was released by Our Space, a Chinese-language science-outreach publication, via its Weibo social media account on Oct. 8.

Related: Chang'e 4 in Pictures: China's Mission to the Moon's Far Side

A desaturated, high-contrast version of the material viewed by Yutu 2.

(Image credit: CNSA/CLEP/NASA/GSFC/Dan Moriarty)

While gaining the attention of the Yutu 2 team, the material does not appear altogether mysterious, as claimed by Chinese media.

Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, told Space.com that the new image reinforces the previous suggestion that the material is broadly similar in nature to a sample of impact glass found during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Sample 70019, collected by astronaut and trained geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, is made of dark, broken fragments of minerals cemented together and black, shiny glass. Impact melt glass can be created or modified through high-speed meteor impacts on a planetary surface.

Dan Moriarty, NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has analyzed and processed the image, seeking clues as to its precise nature. While this compressed image lacks a lot of the useful information a raw image would contain, Moriarty said he could gain insights by adjusting parameters.

Yutu 2 looks back over tracks made from the Change 4 lander in July.

(Image credit: CNSA/CLEP)

"The shape of the fragments appears fairly similar to other materials in the area. What this tells us is that this material has a similar history as the surrounding material," Moriarty said. "It was broken up and fractured by impacts on the lunar surface, just like the surrounding soil.

"I think the most reliable information here is that the material is relatively dark. It appears to have brighter material embedded within the larger, darker regions, although there is a chance that is light glinting off a smooth surface," Moriarty told Space.com, adding that the material is likely heterogeneous in composition.

The image also gives an idea of the origin of the substance. Moriarty said the material may have been excavated by the crater-forming impact or it may be a breccia, containing highlands crust, glass, impactor material and basalts from the volcanic "seas" known as mare. "But we're definitely looking at a rock," Moriarty concluded.

Related: Moon Master: An Easy Quiz for Lunatics

China's Yutu 2 moon rover captured this image from the edge of the small crater.

(Image credit: CNSA/CLEP )

Yutu 2 has been making its way west from the Chang'e 4 landing site, which is situated within the roughly 110-mile-wide (180 kilometers) Von Krmn Crater. On July 28, during Lunar Day 8 of the mission, the rover came across a crater about 6.5 feet (2 meters) in diameter containing a material deemed to have an unusual color and luster.

The initial discovery was made by a Yutu 2 drive team member checking images from the rover's main camera. The drive team consulted lunar scientists, resulting in the decision to postpone plans to have Yutu 2 continue west and instead order the rover to check out the strange material.

Our Space, which announced the findings on Aug. 17, used the term "" ("jiao zhuang wu"), which can be translated as "gel-like." This description sparked wide interest and speculation among lunar scientists.

The first images of the crater and its contents came from an obstacle-avoidance camera. These images did not, however, have a high resolution, and they included colored shapes likely related to Yutu 2's science instruments, further obscuring the material.

Yutu 2 made a number of approaches to the material to analyze it using the rover's Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS), which detects light that is scattered or reflected off materials to reveal their makeup.

The small adjustments in orientation and roving tested the rover and its team, with the danger that Yutu 2 could fall into and become stuck in the crater. The movement of the sun across the sky also altered shadowing and affected results.

A second set of measurements, taken in August, was apparently more successful than the first, but results from VNIS have not been announced.

Yutu 2 has driven a total of 950 feet (289 m) across 10 lunar days. Yutu 2 and the Chang'e 4 lander power down to hibernate during the roughly two-week-long lunar nights, when temperatures can drop to as low as minus 310 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 190 degrees Celsius).

Sunrise over the landing site in Von Krmn Crater occurred Oct. 21; Yutu 2 will wake for Lunar Day 11 on Oct. 22, and the lander will do so about 24 hours later.

Follow Andrew Jones at @AJ_FI. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Link:

Here's What China's Yutu 2 Rover Found on the Far Side of the Moon (Photos) - Space.com

In August, Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 discovered something strange on the far side of the Moon: a mysterious substance that the Chinese space agency referred to as "gel-like" and "colored".

And now, China's Lunar Exploration Program has released a new photo of the substance - shedding more light on what the strange substance could possibly be.

According to experts, it's most likely what scientists initially hypothesized: dark glass formed as a result of an impact - the same stuff American astronauts found during the Apollo 17 mission, Space.com reports.

(CNSA/CLEP)

High velocity meteor impacts are able to pressurize minerals into shiny glass that can end up refracting light in surprising ways.

"I think the most reliable information here is that the material is relatively dark," Dan Moriarty, NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center told Space.com.

"It appears to have brighter material embedded within the larger, darker regions, although there is a chance that is light glinting off a smooth surface."

High-contrast view of the substance. (CNSA/CLEP/NASA/GSFC/Dan Moriarty via Space.com)

Previously, Yutu-2 struggled to get a closer look since the strange object was at the bottom of a crater.

The lander is about to wake up from its two week long, lunar night cycle slumber. Perhaps then, we'll be getting more answers.

This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.

More:

China Releases a New Photo of The Mystery Substance They Found on The Moon - ScienceAlert

On 21 October 2019, the 70th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) is opening its doors in Washington D.C., with the slogan 'Space: The Power of the Past, the Promise of the Future'.

While celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, more than 4000 visitors will gather at 150 exhibitor stands, and will participate in and attend approximately 200 plenary discussions and technical and scientific presentations to find out about current developments in spaceflight.

The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has always been present at the accompanying exhibition, and this year is no different. DLR and the City of Bremen - the 'City of Space' - will be presenting eight current and future projects, as well as the goals of German spaceflight on a stand with an area of around 150 square metres.

"Since the launch of the first satellite in 1957, spaceflight has contributed to exploring the unknown, expanding boundaries and broadening horizons, as well as addressing challenges here on Earth," says Pascale Ehrenfreund, Chair of the DLR Executive Board and incoming President of the IAF.

"In its nearly 70 years of existence, the IAF has established itself an important international platform for those working in the field of space exploration and research. Here, all the major players in the space field can combine and coordinate their activities to further develop a dynamic space sector."

The IAC is dedicated to the future exploration of space, innovative technologies, the benefits of space research for society, international collaboration, space legislation and inspiring young people, as well as joint projects and missions. Discussions aimed at contributing to the continuation of global collaboration in space will be taking place during IAC.

The most prominent example of this is the work conducted on the International Space Station, which has been in operation since 2000. Its success highlights the important role that the field of spaceflight plays in our lives and is an example of collaboration across all borders. Close international cooperation is continuously being strengthened by the increasing number of nations and partnerships, as well as by commercial and private companies becoming more involved in the space sector.

German space projects at IAC 2019DLR will be presenting numerous topics and exhibits at the IAC. The astronaut assistance system CIMON and the X-ray telescope eROSITA for Dark Energy research from Germany's current space programme, for which the DLR Space Administration is responsible, will be showcased.

Other projects include GESTRA - a new radar system for the detection of space debris - and SMART LCT, a cutting-edge laser communications terminal 'made in Germany', which is capable of transmitting data from one satellite to another at extremely high speeds. It is already in use in the European Data Relay System - Europe's 'space data highway'.

Related LinksGerman Aerospace CenterRocket Science News at Space-Travel.Com

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DLR pursues international cooperation and future technologies for spaceflight - Space Daily