Enterprise mounted to the top of a modified Boeing 747 during OV-101 Flight 7 on October 12, 1977. The Shuttles Tail Cone was removed for this mission, exposing its mock engines. Photo: NASA

Prior to the inaugural launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981, NASA conducted a series of performance tests with a prototype known as Enterprise. Named for the fictional Star Trek vessel, Enterprise provided our first glimpse of what a future spaceship might actually look like.

When I was a kid, I loved to play with my toy Enterprise Shuttle, which rested comfortably on top of its corresponding toy 747 jet airliner. NASAs Space Shuttle had not yet launched to space (yes, Im dating myself here), yet my imagination was already soaring, as I envisioned the black-and-white spaceplane soaring through the celestial void.

As an adult, I still hold a soft spot for Enterprise. The intrepid prototype set the stage for NASAs a 4.5-million-pound space truck, despite it never reaching orbit.

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Remembering Enterprise: The Test Shuttle That Never Flew to Space - Gizmodo

After the USSR launched Sputnik 1 in 1957, the space race quickly gained momentum. A decade later, the first space probe that entered the atmosphere of another planet while still operational did so successfully 55 years ago today, on October 18, 1967. Venera 4 arrived on Venus and began sending data about the planets atmosphere until it lost contact thereafter, also making it the first space probe to send data from inside the atmosphere of another planet.

The spacecraft revealed more than any mission previously had about another planet, but the mission also alluded to how the USSR was managing its public image when it came to the space race.

Venera 4 landed on Venus just one day before the arrival of Mariner 5, a US spacecraft originally destined for Mars that had been modified and sent to our sister planet to collect data on its atmosphere, but as a flyby mission with no probe, marking a minor space race victory for the USSR.

Interestingly, although you might have thought that the Russians would concentrate on Mars, it being a Red Planet, they actually concentrated on Venus for a lot of the Soviet era, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute, member of the Chandra X-ray Telescope team, and a space history archivist, tells Inverse.

Venera 4 mission prior to launch.Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

While the USSR set its sights primarily on Venus, it hadnt entirely forgotten about Mars.

According to McDowell, Americans were focusing on Mars, and [the Soviets] knew they couldnt beat the Americans at Mars. But, come to think of it, they did try Mars a number of times, [but] they just kept failing. They kept failing at Venus as well, but they tried enough with Venus that they eventually had some success.

The USSR actually had a Mars program where similar to NASAs approach with the Mariner 5 spacecraft, the same spacecraft design was used for both Mars and Venus.

They [the USSR] launched a bunch of them, and a lot of them failed before getting out of Earth orbit. So, they got codenames like Kosmos 21. Translation: it got as far as Earth orbit and then died, McDowell says.

In fact, there has been an entire slew of Kosmos missions since 1962. As of 2013, there were at least 2500. That is a lot of failed missions.

Initially, two versions of Venera 4 were constructed and launched. The second one launched just five days after the first, but it never left Earth orbit due to an engine malfunction. Unsurprisingly, given the USSRs modus operandi, this mission earned itself the name Kosmos 167.

What made Venera 4 stand out from its predecessors wasnt simply that it arrived at Venus intact without overheating before reaching the atmosphere like Venera 3 but also that the space probe was engineered to survive for a relatively long time once inside of the planets hot and high-pressure atmosphere, particularly compared to what we are used to here on Earth.

The surface pressure of Venus exceeds 75 times that of Earths at sea level (measured in bars), and temperatures can reach up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

Trying to make a piece of hardware that can survive crushing pressures and all those temperatures is not easy. Especially if you're trying to have parachute strings that dont melt, McDowell explains. The idea is that once it's down to a certain altitude, it releases a parachute and then floats down and lands on the surface and then makes measurements of temperature and pressure on the surface. But, in fact, it returns temperature and pressure data on the way down.

An example of Soviet space propaganda. Buyenlarge/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Despite the fact that after entering the atmosphere, the Venera 4 rapidly lost connection, the Soviets were confident that the probe had landed on the planets surface.

They [the Soviets] initially claimed it had landed. But later, they realized it hadnt. It just landed on the top of a very tall mountain, McDowell says. And then later they realized, no, actually, it was crushed in the atmosphere before it hit the surface. It took a long time before the Soviets kind of went back on it. Once Venera 7 landed successfully, like quietly, you know, [the USSR] started listing Venera 4 as not having landed.

The manufactured story about Venera 4s (faux) landing became another example of the USSRs tendency towards secretiveness and their tendency to dictate history as they desired, as opposed to how it actually happened.

Nonetheless, the incorrect interpretation of Venera 4s landing ultimately became attributed to the radio altimeter. It would give the same radio signal signature every 18 miles. This effect is called aliasing and makes altitudes that are a certain distance apart indistinguishable. Initially, the Soviet scientists interpreted the first signal to come from an altitude of 16 miles, which was thought to be approximately where the cloud tops were with respect to the surface (though, this was unconfirmed).

Were this the case, Venera 4 would have successfully landed. However, due to inconsistencies with other data, it later became clear that the actual altitude of the first signal was from 34 miles above the surface and that the ship never made it to the ground intact.

Illustration of the Venera 9 spacecraft on the surface of Venus. MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

Regardless of Venera 4s controversial, or supposed landing, on Venus, it provided important scientific insights.

Venera 4 carried a number of instruments on board designed to collect data relevant to the characterization of Venus atmosphere including gas analyzers, an altimeter, thermometers, a barometer, an atmospheric density gauge, and radio transmitters. All of these were contained within a 844-pound lander probe.

The main bus that had carried the lander and detached from it prior to its descent through the Venusian atmosphere measured that the planet had a weak magnetic field, but detected no radiation belts.

Prior to Venera 4, the temperature, pressure, and composition of the atmosphere were largely up for debate. While it was largely thought the planet was hot, one paper from MIT proposed that Venus was experiencing an ice age. Estimates for surface pressures ranged from several to thousands of atmospheres.

Finally, on October 18, 1967, Venera 4s lander entered the Venusian atmosphere. The space probes cabin decelerated 300 Gs upon descent and its heat shield reached temperatures of 19,830 degrees Fahrenheit. But it returned valuable information for future Soviet missions to Venus, including successful landers.

To sum up, it was the first in situ confirmation that Venus' lower atmosphere was indeed very hot (something that was suggested from prior remote microwave observations), Emmanuel Marcq tells Inverse. Marcq is a professor in atmospheric science at Universit de Versailles Saint-Quentin en Yvelines (UVSQ) and at Laboratoire Atmosphres, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS) who specializes in telluric atmospheres and particularly the atmosphere of Venus.

It did pave the way for later missions that could reach and operate at the surface, like Venera 9 and 10 in 1975 (more historically significant in my opinion: first pictures taken from the surface of another planet, a few months before NASA's Viking pictures from Mars), Marcq says.

The data had been useful in 1967 to validate the atmospheric models that scientists had already predicted for the planet, but in the same sense that the geologic data from Venera 8 is still used for studies today, can data from the Venera 4 be helpful in the same way?

The fact that it was a Soviet mission more than 50 years old does not help in that regard (even some data from Apollo or later Viking missions cannot be read anymore because the digital file formats used back then were not documented and the scientists/engineers involved are now retired and/or dead...), said LeMarcq.

Venera 4 was a leap forward at the time, providing important data for scientists and meant big strides in aeronautical engineering. Fifty-five years later, it still has its place as a major landmark in space exploration history and serves as a reminder of revisionist history.

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55 years ago, Russia changed spaceflight forever and lied about it a little - Inverse

Backdropped by a blue and white part of Earth, space shuttle Discovery is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 26 crew member as the shuttle approaches the International Space Station during STS-133 rendezvous and docking operations. Docking occurred at 2:14 p.m. (EST) on Feb. 26, 2011. Photo: NASA

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For three decades, the Space Shuttle program carried 355 astronauts into orbit on 135 missions.

And it took a team of thousands of engineers, technicians and other employees to keep the program flying. A new documentary When We Were Shutte tells the stories of those working behind the scenes and what the program meant to them.

Well speak with director Zackary Weil about the film.

Then, SpaceX is making progress on its Starship spacecraftand work continues here in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center. Well hear from NASA Spaceflight dot coms managing editor Chris Gebhardt about the latest from Starbase and KSC.

RSVP to the Thursday, October 20 screening of When We Were Shuttle at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

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Ranked: The Worlds Most Surveilled Cities

This may come as a surprise, but it wasnt until 2007 that the global urban population overtook the rural population. At that time, the two groups were split nearly 50/50, with around 3.3 billion people apiece.

Today, the percentage of people living in urban areas has grown to over 55%, and is expected to reach 68% by 2050. Due to this trend, many of the worlds largest cities have become home to tens of millions of people.

In response to such incredible density, governments, businesses, and households have installed countless security cameras for various purposes including crime protection. To grasp the scale of this surveillance, weve taken data from a recent report by Comparitech to visualize the most surveilled cities in the world.

Excluding China for the time being, these are the worlds 10 most surveilled cities.

Figures rounded

The top four cities all belong to India, which is the worlds second largest country by population. Surveillance cameras are playing a major role in the countrys efforts to reduce crimes against women.

Further down the list are cities from a variety of countries. One of these is Russia, which has expanded its use of surveillance cameras in recent years. Given the countrys track record of human rights violations, activists are worried that facial recognition technology could become a tool of oppression.

The only U.S. city on the list is Los Angeles, which contains some of the countrys wealthiest neighborhoods and municipalities. That includes Beverly Hills, which according to the Los Angeles Times, has over 2,000 cameras for its population of 32,500. That translates to about 62 cameras per 1,000 people, meaning that Beverly Hills would finish at #2 in the global ranking if it were listed as a separate entity.

IHS Markit estimates that as of 2021, there are over 1 billion surveillance cameras installed worldwide. The firm also believes that 54% of these cameras are located in China.

Because of limited transparency, its impossible to pinpoint how many cameras are actually in each Chinese city. However, if we assume that China has 540 million cameras and divide that amongst its population of 1.46 billion, we can reasonably say that there are 373 cameras per 1,000 people (figures rounded).

A limitation of this approach is that it assumes everyone in China lives in a city, which is far from reality. The most recent World Bank figures suggest that 37% of Chinas population is rural, which equates to over 500 million people.

With this in mind, the number of cameras per 1,000 people in a Tier 1+ Chinese city (e.g. Shanghai) is likely far greater than 373.

Chinas expansive use of cameras and facial recognition technology has been widely documented in the media. These networks enable the countrys social credit program, which gives local governments an unprecedented amount of oversight over its citizens.

For example, Chinas camera networks can be used to verify ATM withdrawals, permit access into homes, and even publicly shame people for minor offences like jaywalking.

This might sound like a dystopian nightmare to Western audiences, but according to Chinese citizens, its mostly a good thing. In a 2018 survey of 2,209 citizens, 80% of respondents approved of social credit systems.

If youre interested in learning more about surveillance in Chinese cities, consider this video from The Economist, which explores the opportunities and dangers of comprehensive state control.

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All of the World's Spaceports on One Map - Visual Capitalist

Richard Parker has 29 years of experience in the space industry. He is currently head of space insurance at Canopius and divisional president of Assure Space, an underwriting agency that provides space insurance, which he co-founded in 2011.

As we enter a new frontier of space development, the insurance industry is playing a key role in propelling space endeavors.

Considering that a typical telecommunications satellite in geostationary orbit costs around $200 million, and launching it into its proper orbit costs another $100 million, space insurance is essential for financing commercial space ventures.

Commercial human spaceflight has arrived. Rockets from companies run by Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are regularly going to space. Massive satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit are being built to provide global satellite services.

And new commercial missions are being planned to return humans to the moon and to explore Mars by the end of the decade. These endeavors represent both opportunities and risks for space insurers.

Most space-related insurance to date has centered around the satellite services on which modern life increasingly depends.

In our interconnected, data-driven world, spacecraft provide a vital link in telecommunications and internet infrastructure. Satellites enable internet, television, banking, Earth observation, the Global Positioning System (GPS), weather, national defense, and communication between cell towers and networks in remote areas.

With increasing satellite launches driven by demand for broadband, the need to replace older satellites, and more regular resupply schedules for the International Space Station (ISS), considerable opportunities exist for space insurers.

Spacecraft and the rockets that launch them are becoming increasingly more complex, as are the business applications that ensure their seamless integration into our daily lives. This, combined with a limited number of launches per year and the potential for large losses, makes space insurance one of the most challenging types of insurance to underwrite.

In addition, two new challenges are significantly affecting the core business of space insurers.

The first is the risk of collision due to an increasing number of objects in low-Earth orbit. The deployment of over 2,000 satellites for Starlink and OneWeb into an already-congested environment containing both active and derelict satellites and rocket bodies has greatly raised the probability of collision. Recent anti-satellite demonstrations have added to the amount of both trackable and un-trackable debris in these orbits.

Potential regulation surrounding debris in low-Earth orbit is possible, as space debris could ultimately cause significant losses for space insurers and limit the use of certain orbits. How it will be cleaned up and who will fund these efforts could affect space insurance in terms of risk analysis and the potential to insure debris removal operations.

Tracking technology, automatic collision avoidance systems, debris removal, and in-orbit servicing also have the potential to reduce the risk of collision.

The second new challenge facing space insurers is the introduction of new launch vehicles. Several companies are currently developing rockets, both small and large.

For these vehicles to be commercially successful, they will need paying customers, who in turn will need insurance, for early flights. Insurers will then have to decide whether to insure the first, second, or third launch of a new rocket.

Renewed interest in space exploration, as well as the predicted rise of the space-for-space industry (when goods and services are produced in space for use in space), are fueling a number of emerging space endeavors. For example, NASA is working on multiple moon missions as a prelude to returning humans to the moon by 2024 and establishing a potential staging point for traveling onto Mars.

Many of these missions will be implemented by the commercial space industry. Their objectives will include mapping, demonstrating technology, and exploring the moons natural resources.

Many other countries are also working on moon missions; some will orbit the moon, others will land, and some will deploy rovers for detailed exploration. Canopius is already considering the requirements for space insurance for all or elements of these missions.

Space tourism is another new project. In addition to buying a seat on a commercial rocket into space, a private citizen can pay NASA to take a trip to the ISS.

To date, most space tourism has been funded by high-net-worth individuals who have not typically sought insurance. As additional players enter the market, they will need access to both insurance and funding for cutting-edge space projects.

The space insurance industry cautiously welcomes growth in commercial space endeavors. New launch vehicles, new satellite technology, and ambitious space missions require careful analysis of the design, manufacture, and testing of the hardware.

Underwriters need to be comfortable with the heritage, margins, and redundancy of these programs. Policy expertise is needed to ensure that the coverage is appropriate and addresses all potential scenarios. Financial modeling of individual space insurance risks and the overall space portfolio is necessary to calculate premium, establish strategy, and ensure results.

Much excitement in the space industry stems from innovative ideas that are pushing well beyond the boundaries of traditional space exploration or commercial satellite use.

Many space-related entrepreneurial business opportunities are being explored. Some of these include sending objects to space for the sole purpose of raising their value once back on Earth, increasing use of Earth observation combined with artificial intelligence, assembling spacecraft with components already in space, expanding the internet of things, and mining asteroids for materials to construct habitats or fueling stations.

Indeed, a boom in the space-for-space economy is not only possible, its expected. It may soon be possible to assemble commercial satellites in space, further reducing risk and launch costs. Again, insurers will facilitate these opportunities by providing coverage for the first-party physical loss of the assets involved, likely a requisite to secure funding.

Evolving legislation opens the possibility for additional space-related risks and resulting insurance implications. Increased regulation of the commercial space industry is imminent as the congressionally-mandated learning period surrounding space travel ends in 2023.

The commercial space industry, worried about onerous regulations slowing progress made in space travel, may be in direct opposition to those members of Congress who feel space travel should be regulated like commercial aviation.

Space insurance is important for both existing and future commercial space endeavors. It provides financial protection for current satellite operators, new entrepreneurs, and investors in an industry facing potential significant losses due to collisions in orbit, failure of launch vehicles or spacecraft, and loss of human life.

If insurers pull back from space by reducing exposures or coverage, or dramatically increasing premiums, the effect will be felt across the whole space industry. &

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Where No Policy Has Gone Before: Insuring the Risks of Doing Business in Space - Workers Comp Forum

Study indicates that noninvasive exosome-based liquid biopsy would be feasible for monitoring health and disease in people traveling in space

MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ: TECH) today announced that Exosome Diagnostics, a Bio-Techne brand, has reported results from a proof-of-concept study for a novel exosome-based platform that could monitor key biological changes in astronauts in space. The peer-reviewed publication was issued in npj Microgravity, a Nature publication.

Astronauts who return from microgravity environments in space often suffer from vision impairment, intracranial pressure, and other health problems that are not well understood. Collectively, these symptoms are known as spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS). As astronauts are sent on longer missions, and as commercial spaceflight allows non-astronauts to reach microgravity, there is increasing demand for research into the biological mechanisms responsible for SANS and a reliable technique for diagnosing the syndrome.

Exosomes are particles packed with molecular cargo, including proteins and RNA, that are released by cells as part of a natural cell-to-cell communication system. Their molecular contents can reveal important information about health and disease. Exosomes are found in bodily fluids such as blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and urine. They can be accessed with noninvasive liquid biopsy methods, making them an ideal solution to the challenge of monitoring dynamic changes in astronauts traveling in space.

In the study reported in npj Microgravity, scientists from Exosome Diagnostics, Baylor College of Medicine, and NASA contractor KBR demonstrated that exosomes could be extracted from biofluids collected at the International Space Station and stored for future analysis, and that their molecular contents could reveal transcriptome-wide information about key pathways that could shed light on SANS.

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"Exosome Diagnostics has spent years developing and optimizing a platform for whole-transcriptome profiling based on exosome isolation and analysis. Our platform is designed for noninvasive monitoring of health and disease with a depth and breadth that are not possible using other approaches," said Johan Skog, Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President at Exosome Diagnostics. "We have worked closely with NASA to ensure that this technology will be applicable for space travelers, who are exposed to microgravity, different air composition, and radiation. This demonstration clearly shows that exosome-based analysis is a feasible and powerful approach for longitudinal monitoring of the dynamic biological changes that may arise from those conditions."

"We are excited about the potential for our technology to keep astronauts healthier, and also believe that our multi-analyte exosome analysis platform will enable a wide range of precision medicine applications here on Earth," said Kim Kelderman, President of the Diagnostics and Genomics Segment at Bio-Techne. "With an extremely robust and reproducible workflow, our approach to exosome analysis is useful for any research group interested in pathway profiling, patient stratification, and biomarker development."

Paper cited: Chakrabortty, S.K., Khodor, Y.L., Kitchen, R.R. et al. Exosome based analysis for Space Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome and health risks in space exploration. npj Microgravity 8, 40 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41526-022-00225-4https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-022-00225-4

About Bio-Techne Corporation(NASDAQ: TECH)Contact: David Clair, Vice President, Investor Relationsdavid.clair@bio-techne.com612-656-441

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New Publication from Exosome Diagnostics Demonstrates Proof-of-Concept for Monitoring Astronaut Health in Space - Yahoo Finance

A couple of ground rules for living on the International Space Station: You never wear shoes (socks are just fine), and there is no shame in existing among clutter.

From my perspective, as viewed through immersive virtual reality goggles and headphones while inside a warehouse in the East Bay, the astronauts who float above Earth inside the space station are shoeless and messy.

I saw hallways crammed with boxes like ice cubes at the bottom of a glass, and there were floating wires sprouting out from the walls. The casual atmosphere helped to acculturate me to an otherwise out-of-world experience.

SFGATE travel editor Silas Valentino wears a VR headset as part of "The Infinite," an immersive space experience currently housedinside the Craneway Pavilion on the Richmond waterfront.

Like a ghost of the space station, I watched as astronauts floated between their regular duties growing greens in space, pumping iron to keep their muscles active and gazing over continents on the nearby blue planet relying on a calculated schedule to keep them, well, grounded.

The space station makes 16 orbits of Earth in a 24-hour period. Meaning, the astronauts are traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets a day. To keep their sanity and busy workload, they abide by a constant schedule. Sometimes they need a reminder to return to their sleep chamber, which is attached to the ceiling and straps them in.

At 254 miles above us, the astronauts are no longer earthlings, but that doesnt mean theyve sacrificed their humanity. And drawing this connection is exactly the goal of the exhibit. Dubbed Space Explorers: The Infinite,the VR experience occupies part of the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, which was once a Ford assembly plant located along the Richmond shoreline.

Astronaut Joseph R. Tanner, STS-115 mission specialist, waves toward the digital still camera of his spacewalk colleague, astronaut Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper as the two share extravehicular activity (EVA) duties during the first of three scheduled spacewalks. The STS-115 astronauts and the Expedition 13 crewmembers are joining efforts this week to resume construction of the International Space Station.

Customers of The Infinite try out there headsets at Craneway Pavilion in Richmond on Thursday Oct. 13, 2022.

SFGATE culture editor Dan Gentile wears a VR headset as part of The Infinite, an immersive space experience currently housedinside the Craneway Pavilion on the Richmond waterfront, on Thursday Oct. 13, 2022.

A scene from VR scenes of The Infinite, an immersive space experience currently on display at Craneway Pavilion.

Footage from the International Space Station, upper left and lower right, is showcased in "The Infinite," which attendees view through a VR headset. (Images courtesy of The Infinite & by Charles Russo/SFGATE) Footage from the International Space Station, upper left and lower right, is showcased in "The Infinite," which attendees view through a VR headset. (Images courtesy of The Infinite & by Charles Russo/SFGATE)

The exhibition opened last week and will run until the end of the year, with the possibility of an extension. A joint venture of PHI Studio and Felix & Paul Studios, Space Explorers: The Infinite is a traveling circus that uses state-of-the-art technology (in particular, the Oculus Quest 2 headset) to place attendees inside the space station.

Each person is given a headset, and after a bit of fun initiation including a voiceover explaining how we are all a tribute to light and space you enter a large room with lightly padded flooring. After settling into your digital visuals, youre taught to avoid the red lines that indicate the barrier and to avoid stepping too close to other humans.

Jenna Starkey of San Francisco tries on the VR headset at "The Infinite," an immersive space experience currently housedinside the Craneway Pavilion on the Richmond waterfront.

The experience is broken up into four sections that softly guide you along to experiencing everyday life on the International Space Station. The finale has you seated in a theaterlike chair to sit back and view a spacewalk outside the station and above Earth.

The experience ends up becoming one part Neil Armstrong and one part P.T. Barnum. It is a dazzling outing and even brought a member of my group to tears by the time we returned to Earth.

Tickets for adults range from $44 on weekdays to $54 on weekends, and for children ages 8-12, its $24 on weekdays and $29 on weekends. The experience is wheelchair accessible and lasts for about an hour.

An advertisement on the exterior of the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond advertises "The Infinite," an immersive space experience currently housed inside.

Compared to Jeff Bezos Blue Origin (where a seat on a 2021 space flight was auctioned off for $28 million) or Virgin Galactics SpaceShipTwo (for which tickets are $450,000), the $54 ticket price for The Infinite feels manageable for the rest of us.

The experience is based on the series Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, which is billed as the largest production ever filmed in space, and its producers are not hyperbolic. Felix & Paul Studios worked with Time Studios to collaborate with the U.S. International Space Station National Laboratory, NASA and five other international space agencies.

The footage you see was shot over three years to compile more than 250 hours of virtual reality footage. The visual insights into life in space are parsed down into 60 mini clips that attendees activate by slapping at a glowing orb. To watch all 60 orbs would take at least two hours, and you really only have 35 minutes to spend inside the experience a wise marketing move by the producers to lure visitors back.

Attendees explore virtual space inside the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond as part of "The Infinite" on Oct. 13.

The show was designed and constructed in Montreal. For footage, the producers communicated with NASA in Houston to send directives to the astronauts on the space station. This was perhaps the most elaborate movie shoot of all time, and to top it off, the Canadarm contributed to some of the exterior shots from outside the space station.

Once the exhibit was finalized, it premiered in Montreal in July 2021, staying until November 2021. The plan is to stop in three cities per year until 2026. Prior to the Bay Area, the tour stopped in Houston and Tacoma, Washington.

Co-CEO Eric Albert told me it takes three weeks to set up each installation, and they hire about 50 people from each city to help put on the show. He added that the show is continuously evolving and adding or subtracting video clips for the orbs.

The Bay Area is the first to see a new clip from September 2019 of the astronauts gathering around the dinner table on the space station to celebrate one of the International Space Station crew members. Astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri from the United Arab Emirates was gifted a harmonica by one of his crewmates.

Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos.

Hazza, I know its not your birthday, he begins to say before another astronaut cuts him off.

Every day is your birthday in space! she says, as the crew continues floating in the most peculiar way.

A scene from "The Infinite," an immersive space experience currently on display at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond.

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Bay Area's 'The Infinite' VR show is tribute to light, space - SFGATE

The spacecraft at the center of NASA's first asteroid sample return mission has altered its trajectory in preparation for its return to Earth next year.

On Sept. 21 OSIRIS-REx spacecraft fired its thrusters for 30 seconds for a course correction. This is the first time the spacecraft carrying a sample of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu has altered its trajectory since leaving the space rock on May 10, 2021.

Asteroids are made up of material that is left over from the beginning of the solar system and the formation of its planets, including Earth. Scientists hope that by studying the dust and rock OSIRIS-REx returns on Sept. 24, 2023, they could learn more about the building blocks of the solar system, and potentially even those of life itself.

Related: The greatest asteroid missions of all time!

The sample-return mission OSIRIS-REx, formally known as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, is tasked with completing what is far from a straightforward "parcel drop," according to NASA.

The spacecraft must approach Earth with a precise speed and in the right direction to deliver the capsule containing the sample collected from Bennu to the planet's atmosphere safely.

"If the capsule is angled too high, it will skip off the atmosphere," Mike Moreau, OSIRIS-REx deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in a statement. "Angled too low, it will burn up in Earth's atmosphere."

Additional course corrections like this one, therefore, will be essential over the coming year to ensure that the success of the seven-year-long mission, which launched on Sept. 8, 2016, and arrived at Bennu on Oct. 20, 2020.

If OSIRIS-REx stayed on its current trajectory, the spacecraft would pass Earth at a distance of about 1,370 miles (2,200 kilometers), so in July 2023, the spacecraft will begin a series of steering maneuvers.

"Over the next year, we will gradually adjust the OSIRIS-REx trajectory to target the spacecraft closer to Earth," Daniel Wibben, trajectory and maneuver design lead with KinetX Inc., which partners with Lockheed Martin's team that steers the spacecraft, said in the statement. "We have to cross Earth's orbit at the time that Earth will be at that same location."

The process will bring the spacecraft to around 155 miles (250 km) of Earth's surface. This is close enough to release its sample capsule into the atmosphere for a parachute-guided precision landing at the Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert.

Next, NASA personnel will take the returned cargo to a newly built and specially engineered curation lab at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Scientists will use equipment such as specialized gloveboxes, tools and storage containers, all of which are being designed to keep the sample from being contaminated, and thus remain as close as possible to how it was when it was collected by OSIRIS-REx. Samples collected by the mission will also be sent to teams of scientists across the world and a large sample will be preserved for future generations to study.

Not all of the OSIRIS-REx mission's Bennu findings must wait for the sample, however.

Even before the spacecraft reaches Earth next year it has delivered data that could teach researchers more about the asteroid.

In July, scientists announced that data gathered by OSIRIS-REx about the surface of Bennu revealed that the asteroid is so loosely packed that if the spacecraft had attempted to land on it rather than firing its thrusters to back away quickly, it would have sunk beneath the asteroid's surface.

OSIRIS-REx has also provided NASA with data that is important in calculating the potentially hazardous object's future orbit until 2300. This information could be crucial in determining if Bennu, which has a diameter of 1,200 feet (490 meters), could impact Earth after its close approach in 2135.

"NASA's Planetary Defense mission is to find and monitor asteroids and comets that can come near Earth and may pose a hazard to our planet," Kelly Fast, program manager for the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA, said in a 2021 statement.

"We carry out this endeavor through continuing astronomical surveys that collect data to discover previously unknown objects and refine our orbital models for them," she added. "The OSIRIS-REx mission has provided an extraordinary opportunity to refine and test these models, helping us better predict where Bennu will be when it makes its close approach to Earth more than a century from now."

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NASA asteroid-sampling mission on track for delivery next year - Space.com

More money is pouring into the race to launch the first vertical rocket from the United Kingdom.

Scotland's Orbex received 40.4 million (roughly $63 million) in a Series C fundraising round as satellite launch activity accelerates rapidly in the region via companies like Virgin Orbit, Lockheed Martin and Astra.

Orbex CEO Chris Larmour stated Tuesday (Oct. 18) that his company has made "significant" strides in getting its environmentally friendly small-satellite launching rocket ready for action after the booster, called Prime, was unveiled to the public in May.

In photos: First look inside Orbex's Scotland rocket factory

Orbex has already notched numerous milestones including new customers, more manufacturing and "rapid development and testing" of Prime, Larmour said in the statement. "We're delighted to have closed this new funding round led by the Scottish National Investment Bank," he added.

Orbex has said it wants to get its Prime rocket off the ground later this year at Space Hub Sutherland, a new spaceport in northern Scotland that received planning permission in August 2020.

The 62-foot (19-meter) Prime is just one of a set of rockets competing for the small satellite business in the United Kingdom, however. The race to launch space rockets from the U.K. has attracted a clutch of companies seeking to prove not only business smarts, but environmental sensitivity as they launch in protected coastal areas or near heritage monuments.

Related: The UK really wants commercial spaceports. Will they see rockets fly in 2022?

A veteran Scottish rocket startup, Skyrora, plans orbital launches in 2023 from the Shetland Islands' SaxaVord Spaceport, using the 74-foot (22.7 meters) Skyrora XL. Skyrora has sent smaller rockets aloft before, but failed a debut vertical rocket launch to suborbital space earlier this month in Iceland with the 36-foot (11 m) Skylark L. Skyrora sent a shipping container to the Icelandic launch site with all the necessary rocket launch materials to make minimal mark on the coastal landscape, the company said at the time.

Lockheed Martin and its launch partner, ABL Space Systems, had hoped to launch into space from SaxaVord in 2022, but development and regulatory delays forced a slip into next year, according to SpaceNews (opens in new tab). ABL has yet to perform a test launch of the RS1 rocket from Kodiak Island in Alaska, which was initially slated for early 2022.

ABL may be close to that test launch; the usually quiet company announced via Twitter (opens in new tab) in September that they are finalizing their launch window with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. Last week, ABL released footage (opens in new tab) of a test fire of their E2 engines for an expected RS1 flight in Mojave, California.

Even Astra, a company based in California, is eyeing SaxaVord with hopes to launch ahead of the competition. The company already sent rockets to space from Kodiak Island and from Cape Canaveral, Florida. SaxaVord would offer even more orbital options for existing clients and launches may happen there as soon as 2023, Astra has said.

Related: Spaceport construction set to begin on UK's northernmost island

Horizontal launch capability is also coming to the UK soon. Virgin Orbit, which aims to send satellites into space from a horizontal rocket flying aboard a modified 747 plane known as Cosmic Girl, is readying to launch within weeks from another startup spaceport in Cornwall, on the southernmost tip of British land.

A quieter competitor, Black Arrow Space Technologies, is working on horizontal rocket launches using a repurposed crude bulk carrier near the coast of Wales. It is aiming for a maiden launch in 2023 using a small rocket to launch into low Earth orbit, with plans to heft as much as 5.5 tons (5 metric tons) on a larger launcher sometime down the line.

Outside of the U.K. there are even more European companies racing for orbital business, such as Bavaria's Rocket Factory Augsburg and Munich's Isar Aerospace, both of which have 2023 launches on the roster. Examples of other European competitors include HyImpulse, which is a spinoff from the German Aerospace Center, and Spain's PLD Space for suborbital launches.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom (opens in new tab)orFacebook (opens in new tab).

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Orbex raises $63 million to help fund 1st vertical rocket launch from UK - Space.com

MASON, OhioKings Island has done it again.

Cincinnati's favorite theme park has tweeted that they will announce something new for 2023 on Wednesday, without giving any hint about what it could be.

"What's new for 2023? Visit our website tomorrow to find out! Let the speculation begin," the park tweeted with a photo of the Eiffel Tower.

So we took up their offer and decided to speculate.

Why it probably won't be a roller coaster

While fans would love to see a new roller coaster, possibly to fill the empty space where Vortex once stood, that seems unlikely. Why? Because every time they announced a major coaster in the past decade, the park put out teasers weeks in advance.

Think about the posters hinting about space flight before Orion's announcement in 2019. Or all the teasing about axes, and broken wood, before the Mystic Timbers announcement in 2016.

A coaster rollout usually comes after a whole season of clues, and there have been none this year.

A flat ride?

Some coaster enthusiasts have speculated that Kings Island could get a new "flat" ride, or ground-based ride in 2023, that might possibly replace Sling Shot, the capsule on steel cables that was removed back in May.

Currently, that is just a big empty space near Adventure Express.

In addition, with parent Cedar Fair closing its California's Great America theme park near San Francisco, it is already moving some of those rides to other parks. Kings Island could get one of them.

Planet Snoopy revamp to "Camp" Snoopy

This one is getting some buzz, because several Cedar Fair parks have rebranded Planet Snoopy as Camp Snoopy the last few years.

Among them, Cedar Point and Carowinds, where the children's area has been repainted, spruced up, and turned into a summer-camp like environment.

Kings Island has not made many changes to Planet Snoopy in recent years: it might be time for an update.

Year-round operations?

This one was getting the most talk on Tuesday on Kings Island discussion boards, such as KI Central.

It is possible the park will add some weekend operations in January, February and March to make it officially a "year-round" park.

Why? Because sister parks Carowinds and Kings Dominion this week just announced they will be going to year-round ops.

And Kings Island doesn't want to sit there, closed, while Kings Dominion is running rides. After all, Kings Dominion has always been looked at as Kings Island's "kid sister."

Of course, the weather in Mason is a lot colder in January than in Charlotte, NC.

So the park would probably not be able to operate much more than it does during Winterfest, which means Mystic Timbers and Flight of Fear.

But Kings Island said "let the speculation begin," so we speculated.

There._______________________

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Kings Island plans major announcement Wednesday: What it could be - WCPO 9 Cincinnati

A computer-generated rendering of the mothership that Aurora has been contracted by Virgin Galactic to build for future spaceflight missions (Photo courtesy of Virgin Galactic)

Aurora Flight Sciences has reached a new agreement with Virgin Galactic that will see the Virginia-based Boeing subsidiary become a partner in the design and manufacturing of Virgin's next generation motherships.

Virgin Galactic's new agreement reached with Aurora comes two months after the company reported its first quarter 2022 results that confirmed its next VSS Unity test space flight is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of this year. Virgin's work under the partnership agreement with Aurora has already begun, as the two companies have been spending the "past several months" developing design specifications and workforce and resource requirements for the two-vehicle contract.

With Aurora, we are accessing the best of the nationwide aerospace ecosystem, Swami Iyer, President of Aerospace Systems, said, commenting on the new agreement. As a subsidiary of the worlds largest aerospace company, Aurora has some of the industrys top engineers and manufacturing facilities.

The motherships that Aurora is developing will provide the air launch capability needed by Virgins spaceship spaceship to be released into suborbital flight at an altitude of approximately 50,000 feet.

Virgin Galactic Chief Executive Officer Michael Colglazier, commenting on the Aurora agreement, said the motherships under development are "integral to scaling our operations. They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year. Supported by the scale and strength of Boeing, Aurora is the ideal manufacturing partner for us as we build our fleet to support 400 flights per year at Spaceport America."

Aurora's new partnership with Virgin Galactic comes a year after the "Unity 22" sub-orbital spaceflight of their SpaceShipTwo-class VSS Unity that occurred in July last year. Since then, Virgin has committed to launching its next "Unity 23" mission in 2022 that will carry three paying crew members from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council. Their focus with Unity 23 is to measure the effects of the transitional phase from gravity to microgravity on the human body.

Virgin has also established limited availability for purchasing of tickets on future space flights for a total price of $450,000. As of April 25, 750 people have made reservations for their piloted flights, according to an article published in the June 2022 edition of Via Satellite, a sister publication to Avionics International.

Manufacturing activities for the motherships being built by Aurora will occur at the company's Columbus, Mississippi, and Bridgeport, West Virginia, facilities, with final assembly occurring at Virgin Galactic's facility in Mojave, California.

The first new Aurora-built mothership is expected to enter service in 2025, the same year Virgin Galactics first Delta-class spaceship is expected to begin revenue payload flights. The companys upcoming commercial missions are expected to begin by the first quarter of 2023.

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Aurora to Design New Motherships for Virgin Galactic Space Flights - Aviation Today

From left to right: A Chinese Long March 2F rocket launches June 4 with the Shenzhou 14 astronaut mission; A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches Feb. 3 with a batch of Starlink internet satellites on Feb. 3; A Soyuz rocket launches Feb. 10 with a cluster of OneWeb internet satellites. Credit: Xinhua/SpaceX/Arianespace

If it feels like there are more rockets launching into orbit than ever before, its not just you. The worlds launch operators, led by SpaceX and Chinas state-run enterprises, launched 72 missions into orbit in the first half of 2022, on pace to break last years record of 135 orbital deliveries.

There were 15 launches to add spacecraft to SpaceXs Starlink internet network, three crew missions to the International Space Station and an astronaut launch to Chinas space station, and missions to deploy satellites for the U.S., Chinese, and Russian military.

The launch cadence in the first half of the averaged one mission every two-and-a-half days, driven primarily by the rapid-fire launch rate by SpaceX and China.

Last year, the worlds launch providers broke the record for the highest number of orbital missions in a calendar year. The 135 successful orbital launches in 2021 dont include 11 failed orbital launch attempts. The previous record for the most successful orbital launches in a year was 129, set in 1984.

But declining post-Cold War military budgets led to lower launch rates in the 1990s and 2000s. Chinas growing aspirations in space and the rise of SpaceX have reversed that trend, with annual launch numbers now exceeding those of the 1970s and 1980s.

Here are some statistics for orbital launches from Jan. 1 through June 30:

Ten of the launches in the first half of the year used small-class rockets capable of carrying less than a metric ton (about 2,200 pounds) of payload into low Earth orbit. The remainder of the missions used medium or heavy-lift rockets.

There were three launch failures in the opening six months of 2022, all by light-class launchers. Two commercial rockets developed by Astra failed to reach orbit on missions in February and June for NASA to deploy CubeSats into orbit. And a Hyperbola 1 rocket developed by the by the Chinese company i-Space failed on a launch attempt in May.

China closed out the first half of the year with three more launches.

A solid-fueled Kuaizhou 1A launcher lifted off June 22 at 0208 GMT (10:08 p.m. EDT on June 21) from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China. The Kuaizhou 1A rocket deployed a small research satellite named Tianxing 1 into a low-altitude polar orbit less than 180 miles (290 kilometers) above Earth.

Chinas state-run Xinhua news agency said the Tianxing 1 satellite will be mainly used for experimentssuch as space environment detection.

The Kuaizhou rocket family is operated by Expace, a subsidiary of the government-ownedChina Aerospace Science and Industry Corp., or CASIC. Expace developed the Kuaizhou rocket family based on Chinese military missile technology to pursue a growing commercial space market in China.

The Kuaizhou 1A rocket is capableof injecting 660 pounds (300 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit, according to Expace.Kuaizhou means speedy vessel in Chinese, a name indicative of its purpose as a satellite launcher that can be readied for liftoff in a short time period.

The launch of the Tianxing 1 satellite marked the 15th flight of a Kuaizhou 1A rocket.

China launched a Long March 2D rocket with three military payloads at 0222 GMT on June 23 (10:22 p.m. EDT on June 22). The three satellites make up the second group of spacecraft in a family of Chinese military platforms in low Earth orbit.

Chinese officials said the satellites were collectively part of the Yaogan 35 fleet. The first three Yaogan 35 satellites launched on a Long March 2D rocket in November 2021.

The exact purpose of the Yaogan 35 satellites is unknown, but the Yaogan name is typically used as a cover for Chinese military spacecraft. U.S. military tracking data showed the satellites orbiting at an altitude of about 300 miles (500 kilometers) and an inclination of 35 degrees to the equator.

Another Chinese launch June 27 deployed the third in a line of Gaofen 12-class remote sensing satellites. A Long March 4C rocket took off from the Jiuquan launch base at 1546 GMT (12:46 p.m. EDT) to haul the Gaofen 12-03 imaging satellite to a polar orbit at an altitude of approximately 370 miles (600 kilometers).

The Gaofen 12 satellites carry microwave remote sensing instruments for Earth observations.

Chinese officials say the Gaofen satellites are part ofthe China High-Resolution Earth Observation System, or CHEOS.

China says the CHEOS satellite fleet is a civilian-operated program comprising optical and radar imaging spacecraft. Chinese authorities have published high-resolution imagery taken by previous Gaofen satellites, suggesting there is a civilian component to their missions. Other satellites, like the Yaogan series, are for primarily military purposes.

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World's rockets on pace for record year of launch activity Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

Six menus comprising vegetarian and non vegetarian Indian food items are being prepared for the crew of the countrys first human spaceflight aboard the Gaganyaan. The crew of the first ever human mission from India will have a large variety of food to choose from which is being prepared by Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) Mysore, a lab under Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Confirming this to Financial Express Online, in an exclusive conversation, Secretary, Department of Defence R&D and Chairman DRDO Dr G Satheesh Reddy said, Developing food consumption in zero gravity space is a new and unique challenge, and our scientists are relishing this opportunity.

The initial feedback received was incorporated and modified food products are ready for second phase of evaluation, Dr G Satheesh Reddy added.

According to him, DFRL has a lot of experience in developing food for extreme conditions. This includes soldiers posted in Siachen glacier, sailors in submarines, and scientists on expeditions to Antarctica etc.

What is on the menu?

There will be a wide choice for the crew of the first human mission. The six different menus which are expected to include very light items like upma, poha, idli for breakfast; there will be a choice of meat and vegetarian biryani for lunch and for dinner they can choose from chapatis and some gravy with vegetables and meat preparation to choose from.

Will they get dessert and other food items?

Yes. They will get an option of either halwa or any other alternative. There will be a choice for different fruit juices and tea/coffee.

According to reports, the DFRL is expected to treat the food as mildly spicy and in case there is a need to make it spicier there will be sachets to add on.

The first human mission is expected to be of a short flight of a week, therefore the food packages will be semi-hydrated. And the crew will have to add water to the package and warm it up. Due to zero-gravity, there is a fear of water spillage and to control that the water will have to be added in a confined space.

Is there any bread on the menu?

No. as there is a fear of the bread crumbles floating in the space station.

And there will be special straws for enabling the crew to have water or other liquids. And the special straw is being made by the scientists at DFRL.

Has DFRL made food items for space?

Yes. This DRDO lab has the distinction of making special mango bars for the first Indian in space Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma, who in 1984 was on board Russias Soyuz T-11.

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Gaganyaan: What will Indias astronauts eat during their space flight? DRDO Chief reveals - The Financial Express

With some of the most exciting news of his life, Indialantic resident Steve Young had to keep quiet.That was extremely tough. We are a small town and I had to get waivers from anyone that I told, Young said.And that big secret was that Young will be flying to space on the next Blue Origin flight from Texas. He found out that he got the ticket to fly back in December but had to keep it quiet.He sold his telecom business a few years ago and built the three-story Pineapples restaurant in Eau Gallie to run as a family business with his son.Young moved to the Space Coast back in 1969 as a child. Witnessing first-hand the evolution of spaceflight, he holds intense pride that he will be representing the community on this flight.They label you technically an astronaut, but there are real astronauts that live in this area, Young said.So while the flight feeds his thrill-seeking personality, its also about being part of something bigger to come, according to the 59-year-old. Pioneering something that people are going to do on a regular basis. Hopefully in the next 5 to 10 years, Young said.Although it might be subtle, Young drives around town with the Blue Origin feather logo on the side of his pick-up. But the next vehicle he gets into with that feather will be going a lot faster.I was rewarded with lots of money on the sale of my business, Young said. And who better to spend it on than myself for something very special.Hes not allowed to reveal how much he paid and does not yet know who else will be in the capsule nor when he will blast off in the New Shepard rocket.

With some of the most exciting news of his life, Indialantic resident Steve Young had to keep quiet.

That was extremely tough. We are a small town and I had to get waivers from anyone that I told, Young said.

And that big secret was that Young will be flying to space on the next Blue Origin flight from Texas.

He found out that he got the ticket to fly back in December but had to keep it quiet.

He sold his telecom business a few years ago and built the three-story Pineapples restaurant in Eau Gallie to run as a family business with his son.

Young moved to the Space Coast back in 1969 as a child. Witnessing first-hand the evolution of spaceflight, he holds intense pride that he will be representing the community on this flight.

They label you technically an astronaut, but there are real astronauts that live in this area, Young said.

So while the flight feeds his thrill-seeking personality, its also about being part of something bigger to come, according to the 59-year-old.

Pioneering something that people are going to do on a regular basis. Hopefully in the next 5 to 10 years, Young said.

Although it might be subtle, Young drives around town with the Blue Origin feather logo on the side of his pick-up.

But the next vehicle he gets into with that feather will be going a lot faster.

I was rewarded with lots of money on the sale of my business, Young said. And who better to spend it on than myself for something very special.

Hes not allowed to reveal how much he paid and does not yet know who else will be in the capsule nor when he will blast off in the New Shepard rocket.

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Brevard County restaurant owner to fly to edge of space on Blue Origin rocket - WESH 2 Orlando

We may not have to wait too much longer for the first-ever orbital test flight of SpaceX's Starship deep-space transportation system.

SpaceX is developing Starship to carry people and cargo to Mars, the moon and other far-flung destinations. The system consists of two elements, both of which are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable:a huge first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper-stage spacecraft called Starship.

Starship prototypes have conducted a handful of high-altitude test flights to date, but the vehicle has yet to go orbital. SpaceX plans to change that soon; the company is gearing up to launch an orbital test mission with the system, which will also mark the spaceflight debut of Super Heavy.

Photos: SpaceX lifts huge Super Heavy rocket onto launch stand

And those preparations are ramping up. Ship 24, the Starship vehicle that will fly the orbital mission, just rolled out to the launch pad at Starbase, SpaceX's South Texas facility, company representatives announced via Twitter today (opens in new tab) (July 6). In that same post, SpaceX shared three photos of the big spacecraft on the move.

Ship 24 will launch atop a Super Heavy known as Booster 7. That rocket is already at the pad and may conduct a static fire test a prelaunch trial in which a rocket's engines are lit while the vehicle stays anchored to the ground in the coming days.

Both Starship and Super Heavy are powered by SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engine. The spacecraft sports six Raptors, and the booster features a whopping 33, as SpaceX showed in another recent Twitter post (opens in new tab) that shared photos of both vehicles with all of their engines installed.

For comparison, SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket incorporates nine of the company's Merlin engines in its first stage and one Merlin in its upper stage. And Merlins are considerably smaller and less powerful than Raptors.

SpaceX recently cleared a significant regulatory hurdle on the road to Starship's first orbital launch: Last month, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that SpaceX could continue its Starship work at Starbase, provided the company takes more than 75 actions to mitigate the effects of that work on the surrounding area, which is a biodiversity hotspot.

There are other such boxes to check, however; for example, the FAA must still grant SpaceX a launch license ahead of the upcoming orbital attempt.

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

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SpaceX rolls Starship prototype to launch pad ahead of orbital test flight (photos) - Space.com

Jeff Bezos celebrates after his Blue Origin spaceflight in 2021, at left, and plays it cool as a Starfleet officer in the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond. (Photos: Blue Origin / Paramount via Justin Lin)

Over the course of five decades, advances in space science and exploration have changed the Star Trek saga but its obvious that the sci-fi TV show has changed the course of space exploration as well.

You need look no further than Amazons billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, who took inspiration from Star Trek to green-lighttalking computersand his very ownBlue Origin space effort. The same goes for SpaceX founder Elon Musk, whosmentioned in the same breath as the Wright Brothersin a Star Trek: Discovery episode.

I cant imagine a version of the world where Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos exist, for better or worse, however you feel about them, without Star Trek, says Ryan Britt, the author ofPhasers on Stun,a new book chronicling the history of the Star Trek sci-fi franchise.

Im not saying that those guys embody all of Star Treks ideals, because they may not, Britt says in the latest episode of theFiction Science podcast. But there is an audacity to space travel, whether it is from a government like NASA or another nations government thats putting people in space, or if its from the private sector.

In his book, and in the podcast, Britt traces the ups and downs of Star Treks evolution from a relatively short-lived TV show that creator Gene Roddenberry envisioned as aWagon Train to the Starsto a fan phenomenon that has engendered two dozen spin-offs. The latest Trek incarnation,Strange New Worlds,wraps up its first season on the Paramount+ streaming service this week.

Some of the concepts that Star Trek popularized palm-sized communicators, quantum teleportation, holodecks and medical tricorders have made the leap from fiction to fact well in advance of the 23rd century. But theres another side to the equation: Real-life science and technology have changed Star Trek as well.

Take black holes, for instance. Gravitational singularities and their time-warping effects have been a Trek standby since 1967 (when anencounter with a black starthrew the Enterprise into the 60s). But Britt says Star Trek has upped its black hole game, thanks to science consultantErin McDonald.

The way that theyve depicted the black holes in the contemporary Star Treks, starting in Discovery season two, is very close to how contemporary science thinks that they would look and behave, Britt says. In the original series, sometimes Kirk would throw out what a quasar is, and it wasnt quite right. But now, its very close in terms of the way the spatial phenomena look. In the new shows, its very cutting-edge.

The same goes for communicating with aliens. Star Treks crew members leaned heavily onGoogle Translate er, I mean theiruniversal translator to decipher alien languages. But theres never been any guarantee that the aliens will look like prosthetic-wearing humanoids who communicate through speech. (Seattle-area sci-fi author Ted Chiangexplored an alternate scenarioin ashort storythat was adapted into a screenplay for the 2016 movieArrival.)

Britt says Star Treks writers addressed the issue in a Star Trek: Discovery episode focusing on analien species that the crew couldnt figure out how to communicate with. It ends up being pheromones it communicates through these sorts of feelings and these emotions, Britt says. They can translate that back into math, and then they can go from there and create a bridge language.

In retrospect, it shouldnt be so surprising that Star Trek anticipated technologies such as communicators, translators and tricorders. Britt points out that Roddenberryworked with a researcher at the Rand Corporationto figure out which sorts of way-out innovations would lend authenticity as well as a gee-whiz vibe to his sci-fi show.

Arguably, Star Treks most valuable contribution to science and exploration came in the form of inspiration: Britt recountsthe story of how Martin Luther King Jr. persuaded Nichelle Nichols to stick with the showbecause her Uhura character provided a rare opportunity to inspire fellow African-Americans. Nichols, in turn, took on acampaign to inspire women and minorities to apply for spots in NASAs growing astronaut corps.

When Nichelle started her campaign, NASA had very few Black or female applicants, Britt quotes documentary filmmakerTodd Thompsonas saying in the book. Im not saying zero. ButSally RideandRon McNair; yes, they were there as a direct result of her campaign with NASA.

More recent Trek shows have continued to widen diversity on the final frontier: Star Trek: Discovery, for instance, featureda romance between a non-binary human character and a trans alien character played, respectively, by a non-binary actor and a trans actor.

One of the worlds most prominent Trekkie techies is Jeff Bezos: He was just 2 years old when the original Star Trek premiered, but the show inspired one of his favorite childhood games. Wed fight over whod get to be Captain Kirk, or Spock, and somebody used to play the computer, too,Bezos told The Washington Post in 2016. Wed have little cardboard phasers and cardboard tricorders.

Decades later, Bezos acquired a more expensive prop: a model of the Starship Enterprise that was used in the early Star Trek movies and is now on display at Blue Origins headquarters in Kent, Wash. And in 2016, Bezos played Star Trek for real: He talked his way intoa cameo as an alien Starfleet officialin Star Trek Beyond.

It was super-fun for me, Bezos said. It was a bucket-list item.

Five years later, Bezos made a different sort of bucket-list item come true for Star Trek actor William Shatner. The guy who played Captain Kirkfinally got his chance to fly into space for real, courtesy of Bezos and Blue Origin. What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine, Shatner told Bezos afterward.

Elon Musk has his own set of Star Trek ties. In April, when Musk declared his intention to buy Twitter,Shatner jokedthat the billionaire should dump the bird and hire him as the face of Twitter.

You will always be my Captain,Musk tweeted in reply.

Like Bezos, Musk was given a moment of Star Trek immortality: On an episode of Star Trek: Discovery, a character named Captain Gabriel Lorca (played by Jason Isaacs) upbraids a fellow officer by asking him if he wants to be remembered as a pioneer like the Wright Brothers and Elon Musk or as a failed fungus expert.

Spoiler alert: Theres a bit of irony to the reference, in that later episodes reveal Captain Lorca to be more nefarious than he seems.

Britt says he doesnt mind that Star Treks accolades for Elon Musk come from a controversial character like Lorca. In fact, he thinks the controversies in which Musk is currently enmeshed fit right in with one of Star Treks major themes: that we humans may be flawed, but that we are nevertheless capable of doing great things.

These things that happen when humanity leaps forward are not always going to be without their drawbacks, Britt says.

I always thought that was also a secret commentary on Gene Roddenberry himself, oddly, Britt adds. I thought that was like a way of saying the person that created this will be sort of deified, but here they are when theyre actually in the trenches building it, and theres messiness. I like that Star Trek is willing to do that.

Will Star Trek continue to live long and prosper? Britt, whos in his early 40s, says theres a chance hell still be writing about the Star Trek saga when the franchise turns 100 years old in 2066.

It will have to do a couple more radical reinventions, though, to stay relevant, Britt says. And I think that some of that might be a true reboot, right? Where you just completely throw it all out and you just start over, and you say, Well do Starfleet,the Prime Directiveand the Enterprise, but thats all. And then everything else can bereinvented.

Check out the original version of this item on Cosmic Log to find out how close Star Trek came to predicting the course of early 21st-century history, and to look back at 20 years of Trek tech talk. Stay tuned for future episodes of theFiction Science podcast via Anchor, Apple, Google, Overcast, Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public and Reason.

Alan Boyles for the Fiction Science podcast is Dominica Phetteplace, an award-winning writerwho lives in Berkeley, Calif. To learn more about Phetteplace, check out her website,DominicaPhetteplace.com.

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How the Star Trek saga blazed new trails for space exploration with a hand from superfan Jeff Bezos - GeekWire

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has selected candidates for its next round of space missions, which are projected to launch between 2026 and 2030.

Out of the 13 missions proposed, it is expected that between five and seven will be chosen for launch, SpaceNews reported.

The new missions will be part of CAS's third Strategic Priority Program (SPP III) project, also known as the New Horizons Program (The program has no relation to NASA's New Horizons mission.). A description of each of the 13 candidates was published in a paper in the Chinese Journal of Space Science on June 28, 2022.

Related: China is on the hunt for 'Earth 2.0' with proposed space telescope

Three of the proposed missions will conduct astrophysics and astronomy research:

Four of CAS's 13 potential missions are heliophysics efforts:

Four of the potential missions are aimed at studying Earth and other members of our solar system:

Finally, two missions would search the cosmos for habitable exoplanets:

Each of the 13 proposed New Horizons Program missions will be assessed by a CAS committee on criteria such as budgetary requirements, technological readiness level and how quickly the required technologies could be manufactured ahead of Chinas 15th Five-year plan, which begins in 2026. The New Horizons Program also includes funding for research projects that would support future science missions.

Email Brett at BTingley@Space.com or follow Brett on Twitter at @bretttingley. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.

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Search for habitable exoplanets included in China's upcoming space missions - Space.com

There is a layer of Earth's atmosphere that scientists know very little about. Dubbed the "ignorosphere," this layer at the edge of space plays a huge role in determining the intensity of space weather events.

A new space mission is in the works that will attempt to shed more light on the processes that take place there, but it won't be ready before the current solar cycle ends.

When bursts of charged particles from the sun that form the solar wind hit Earth, strange things happen in the planet's gaseous coat. Those heavy particles (protons, electrons and heavy ions) collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere, energizing them, Juha Pekka Luntama, the head of space weather at the European Space Agency (ESA), told Space.com.

Related: Solar storms can destroy satellites with ease a space weather expert explains the science

Most of this energy exchange happens in the thermosphere, the second-highest layer of Earth's atmosphere that extends between altitudes of 60 miles to 360 miles (100 to 600 kilometers). The excess energy warms up the thermosphere and makes it swell. The density of the thin gases that fill this region of space increases. In turn, satellites in low Earth orbit face more drag and sometimes prematurely fall to Earth.

"It's like running against the wind," Anja Stromme, the manager of ESA's Swarm mission, which recently experienced problems maintaining altitude due to bad space weather, told Space.com.

Most of these changes happen in the lowest layer of the thermosphere at altitudes of 60 miles to 120 miles (100 to 200 km), just above the Karman line, a widely recognized boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space. Scientists sometimes call this region "the ignorosphere," due to the dearth of data collected there.

"It's too high for balloons but too low for satellites," said Stromme.

Without these measurements, space weather forecasters have little means to improve their predictions of changes that happen in this region in response to solar flares and other sun eruptions. They have no way of providing proper insights to satellite operators whose spacecraft are at risk. In February this year, SpaceX experienced first hand how serious this risk can be when it lost 40 brand-new Starlink satellites that were victimized by bad space weather right after launch.

"When we see an event on the sun, we can give a warning to satellite operators to be cautious and aware," Luntama said. "But it's very difficult to forecast exactly how big the impact is going to be and how much the atmospheric drag for the satellites will increase."

NASA and ESA have plans for a satellite mission that would help fill those gaps. Making such a mission work, however, is quite a challenge, as it would be at very high risk of succumbing to the exact phenomenon it would be launched to study.

"The problem is that, in this region, around 150 kilometers [90 miles] from Earth's surface, there is still too much atmosphere to slow satellites down," said Luntama. "If you were flying a mission there, it would stay in orbit only for a short time, and then it would spiral into the atmosphere and burn."

The two space agencies want such a mission to remain in orbit for years so that it gets exposed to space weather events of various frequency and intensity. The frequency with which the sun produces sunspots, which are the source of solar flares and eruptions that affect Earth, varies based on the sun's 11-year cycle of activity. To ensure that such a mission keeps providing insights as the sun moves through this cycle, mission engineers have to very carefully design the spacecraft's orbit so that it makes only very brief dips into the low altitudes of the ignorosphere while following an elliptical path.

"The perigee [the closest point to Earth] should be between 100 and 150 kilometers [60 and 90 miles] so that we can get the measurements," said Luntama. "The apogee [the farthest point from the planet] should be several hundreds of kilometers 500 or 600 km [300 or 360 miles] which is clearly away from the atmosphere."

The spacecraft would circle the planet about every 90 minutes, Luntama said, using an on-board propulsion system to compensate for the loss of speed during the flight through the dense low-lying regions.

"We would like to measure the charged particles [from the sun] but also the density of the atmosphere in this region," said Luntama. "We also need information about the magnetic field of Earth, because that changes during solar storms. And lastly, we need precise information about how the atmosphere slows down the satellite."

The mission, however, is still in the planning stages and will not make it into the ignorosphere before this solar cycle ends, Luntama added.

"We have established a science team that consists of scientists from Europe and the U.S., and we are now working on defining the mission," Luntama said. "Once we define more precisely the mission objectives and the measurements that we want, then the engineering teams can start to look at how to build such a mission that can do this."

In the meantime, solar weather experts do what they can to improve their forecasts while the sun keeps exceeding their earlier predictions, producing many more sunspots, solar flares and eruptions than expected. After its first-hand encounter with the whims of space weather, SpaceX joined forces with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and started providing some basic data about the drag Starlink satellites experience during orbit-raising after launch, Tzu-Wei Fang, a NOAA space scientist, told Space.com in an earlier interview.

NOAA uses this information to improve its Whole Atmosphere Model, which attempts to predict space weather near Earth just like meteorologists model weather on the planet.

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Planned NASA mission to the 'ignorosphere' could improve space weather forecasts - Space.com

Humanity has dreamed about different visions of what a civilization in space might look like for longer than most of us have been alive.

Weve been planning ways to sustain human life in orbit and on other planets for decades. Now, it feels like were within reach of that goaland we need to be ready for it.

The newly formedAurelia Instituteaims to prep humanity for a long-term presence in space through R&D, policy, and outreach. Ariel Ekblaw, founder of both the Aurelia Institute and the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, spends her time thinking about and designing the next generation of space stations.

Ekblaw sat down to discuss accessibility needs for human spaceflight, technology demonstrations aboard the ISS, and drawing inspiration from real life and science fiction for future space stations.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to found Aurelia in the first place?

I have led a lab at MIT for the past six years, the MIT Space Exploration Initiative. We have worked on a very broad range of artifacts for life and space, but what I saw as a gap, and something that I wanted to fill by founding Aurelia, is a focus on technology, R&D, and infrastructure for life in space. As wonderful as it is to be able to envision all of these different artifacts that we would use on the inside of a habitat, we actually still have a lot of work to do to build the habitat structures themselves in a way that will scale to allow more people to go into orbit.

The stations that we see coming online in the next few years that we all are really excited about, like Axiom or Orbital Reef, theyre still based on the International Space Station axial model with a relatively limited amount of total crew size. What I would love to do is for Aurelia to contribute in partnership or in collaboration with Axiom and Orbital Reef and NASA and others to the next generation of technology beyond ISS-like approaches. And that could be things like self-assembly, or even something like artificial gravity.

The technology to develop these long-term human habitats in space is developing really quickly. How quickly do we need humanity to prepare for a long-term human presence in space? Are we going to be ready when that tech is ready?

I think we will be ready. I think were ready now, in a really wonderful way. The goal of democratizing access to space is to allow more people around the world to see themselves in that future. Right now, if the real estate in orbit is very small and very elite and very hard to access, then that itself is a big gatekeeper to be able to share space with a lot of people. I really do think that the time is now to begin thinking about scaling infrastructure in space. The other piece of Aurelia that complements the R&D work is trying to get more people ready and offer them a chance to really participate in the space exploration feature.

The perception I had growing up, and I think its a common one, is that the people who go into space have to be incredibly smart and well-educated and in incredible physical shape. Is there any truth to that perception? And how do you get that to change?

I think it was absolutely true in the past, right? It was a requirement to be able to get into the astronaut crew to be amazingly healthy, you know, top of the human population. However, that is changing.

One example of that is that we partnered with AstroAccess for several zero-G flights last year. I supported their inaugural flight in October and then we welcomed them back on our flight in May to show that we can begin to prepare space exploration and microgravity environments to be welcoming to people that may have disabilitiesand also recognizing that certain things that we think of as disabilities on Earth could make people very well suited to life in space. As a concrete example, we know that our legs are very overpowered for life in microgravity. Astronauts often have to relearn not to push off too hard, because all the muscle strength that weve gained over a lifetime and gravity is overkill for micro-G. So folks who are in wheelchairs might find themselves particularly free and dexterous and able to move around because they dont need legs in microgravity in the same way that they might need them on Earth.

Well see the beginning of everyday citizens getting to go to space. There might be some limitations on health risks, but I dont see it being much more extreme than the typical health risks that you would go through with your doctor before doing a zero-G flight or before going on a roller coaster.

What do you have to consider from a technical perspective when building more accessible human spaceflight programs?

NASA has done an amazing job with designing the ISS for the top .001% of human talent. So the first step is to design the interior like an architect would on Earth, where you say, Okay, what are the human users? What are their user profiles? What is their experience going to be on the station? What are their abilities or disabilities? How can we actually design the interior vernacular architecture of a space station to be able to be used by people that arent trained like fighter pilots or PhD mission specialists?

Aurelia is working on building TESSERAE, a self-assembling, modular space station that sprung up from your PhD thesis at MIT. Why is it that something like TESSERAE could allow for more people to live and work in space than something like the International Space Station?

The modules for the ISS are prefabricated on Earth, which means that you have to have a rocket big enough to fit that whole module in. That means that the module can be no bigger than the biggest rocket. With something like TESSERAE, you can design tiles that pack flat in the rocket, like Legos or Ikea furniture. Once those tiles are released in orbit to stochastically self-assemble, you can build a sphere, or essentially a buckyball, that is much bigger than that biggest rocket payload fairing. The bigger the structure, the more occupancy. We have many years of work to be able to really convert TESSERAE into habitat-ready technology, but its something were working on.

TESSERAE had a technology demonstration on Ax-1, the first private astronaut mission to the ISS. Tell me a little bit about what you were thinking about going into that mission, and what you were able to learn from those experiments.

We were thrilled to be part of Ax-1. Its a historic mission, a fully private mission to the International Space Station. It was a really good fit for us as well, with the goals that we have around democratizing access to space.

What we tested was a miniature platformthe TESSERAE tiles, about the size of my palm, that allowed us to assess whether our electronics or the custom magnets that we designed to be the joints of the structure and the hardware are working in our theoretical conception or not. So we were actually able to get sensor data about how these tiles are assembling or disassembling in microgravity. And then that informs the next iteration towards a human scale tile.

Can you share anything about how that demonstration went on Ax-1?

We actually just got a bunch of great results, which were very excited about! We were able to demonstrate a successful, autonomous assembly. With no human in the loop, two tiles are able to come together, dock, and form a perfect, good bond. We actually saw that happen with up to three tiles across just a matter of seconds.

We also saw two tiles come in where they dont quite bond right, but they have enough sensing on board to detect that on their own, again autonomously, and they pulsed off, which is great because these are the corrective maneuvers that we need to see.

The third thing we were wondering is, with this many magnets packed into a small space of say, a partial dome of tesserae, would our sensors pick up on that density of magnetic field as an error and close the tiles away when actually theyre happy and theyre in the dome? We were really happy to see that after a dome was manually assembled by one of the astronauts that was helping us with the experiment, it stayed stable, which was really great. It means that the combination of our electronic sensing and the magnet polarity map is working really well.

Amazingcongratulations! Whats the next step after that demonstration?

One of the next steps in this technology roadmap would be to test more tiles. The Ax-1 test was only seven. We would love to test a full 32 title set, which is whats required to form an entire closed buckyball. The second goal is to go bigger, which means we probably have to leave the cocoon of the International Space Station for testing and actually deploy a system off of a CubeSat in orbit, that still contains the tiles in some way because we dont want them flying really far off away from each other but allows us to deploy more tiles.

Are you working on development for the next stages of this project now?

Were actually working on two things in parallel. Were working on the next stages of development for the TESSERAE project, and were starting Aurelia on will be the next project after TESSERAE. So were doing a trade study where were assessing over 50 different space habitat concepts from science fiction and real demonstrated ideas, and choosing between something like artificial gravity or something like an origami or inflatable station.

Why do you need to do the trade study before picking the next project?

Theres been decades of really amazing work in space habitat conceptual design, so we want to make sure that were not reinventing the wheel and that were also being really respectful of all of the amazing shoulders on which we stand. Were standing on the shoulders of giants, as they say.

The trade study helps us assess the trade offs between different concepts. How many separate launches worth of material does it take to create a TESSERAE habitat at scale vs. an artificial gravity habitat or vs. an origami habitat? What are the costs of those three different models? How much total interior breathable air can you get at a certain volume with these different models?

What do you mean when you say youre pulling from sci-fi space station concepts? Is it possible well end up with a Death Star out there somewhere?

We do have a rule within the team, and we try to pull from utopia. So no Death Star from us!

When we pull from science fiction, we do think a lot about the interior design of artifactsa lot from Star Trek. For the actual scale of space structures. Ive been really inspired by two different books. One was Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, where they convert the ISS into this amalgam kind of growing, expanding structure. They also have this notion of little modular spacecraft called arklets that can dock and separate and dock and separate for reconfigurable space architecture. The second science fiction inspiration, really a longtime inspiration for me, is Ringworld by Larry Niven.

A lot of our work is inspired by the NASA 1975 Summer Study, where they pulled together a bunch of really interesting people and developed this report about the future of space architecture. Its where those photos of what looks like 1960s, 1970s suburbia inside of a space habitat of some sorta lot of Gerry ONeill images, Wernher von Braun-inspired images. So thats kind of a crossover between science fiction and planned for reality but never built.

This storyoriginally appearedonPayload and is republished here with permission.

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Ariel Ekblaw explains the future of space stations - Fast Company

In March of this year, Mark Vande Hei returned to earth after spending 355 days in outer space. Today on the show, I talk to Mark about what it was like to spend nearly a year in orbit, and how he ended up setting a new record for the longest spaceflight by an Americanastronaut. We first talk about how Mark went from being a soldier in the Army who served twice in Iraq, to working for NASA. Mark explains the application process for becoming anastronautand what he thought were the hardest parts of his training. He then shares how you exercise in space, what a typical work day on the International Space Station is like, and how it feels to do a space walk. I ask Mark whether he wasworried when the Russians threatened to abandonhim in space, whether life on the space station is hard on morale, what its like physically to returnto earth, and whether theres a letdown when its time to hang up yourastronautpack.

Photo Credit: NASA

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Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. In March of this year, Mark Vande Hei returned to earth after spending 355 days in outer space. Today on the show I talk to Mark about what it was like to spend nearly a year in orbit, and how he ended up setting a new record for the longest space flight by an American astronaut.

We first talk about how Mark went from being a soldier in the Army, he served twice in Iraq, to working for NASA. Mark explains the application process for becoming an astronaut and what he thought were the hardest parts of his training. He then shows how you exercise in outer space, what a typical work day in the International Space Station is like, and how it feels to do a space walk.

I ask Mark whether he was worried when the Russians threatened to abandon him in space, whether life on the space station is hard to morale, what its like to physically return to Earth, and whether its a let down when its finally time to hang up your astronaut pack. After the shows over check at our show notes at aom.is/space.

Mark Vande Hei, welcome to the show.

Mark Vande Hei: Well thanks, Brett. Its great to be here.

Brett McKay: So you are an astronaut and you just got back in March from a nearly year-long stay in the International Space Station, and were gonna talk about it cause thats an American record. Well talk about the day, how that happened. But before we do, lets talk about just being an astronaut, how long youve been an astronaut, whats kind of the stuff youve been doing as an astronaut?

Mark Vande Hei: Oh, I became an astronaut in 2011. Prior to that, I was an astronaut candidate here at Johnson Space Center, started in 2009. And from 2011 on, a lot of its maintenance training, trying to make sure youre ready for a space flight, and I served as the director of Operations in Russia for a year, so I spent that year in Star City, Russia, where the three members that were then assigned to launch in a Soyuz spacecraft to get to the space station were training. That was definitely a highlight for me of that time.

I also studied Russian a lot, quite honestly, in the intervening years. Theres a lot of neutral buoyancy lab training we do to get ready for spacewalks, thats a big part of it, and thats some of the recurring training I mentioned. And probably about once a month, I would do a public affairs event, where I go and talk to anything from organization to elementary school.

Brett McKay: How many missions have you flown as an astronaut?

Mark Vande Hei: I have flown two, both to the space station and both getting there and back on a Soyuz spacecraft.

Brett McKay: Gotcha. And so is being an astronaut, is this like, were you like a typical kid who, When I grow up, I wanna be an astronaut.? Was that something youve always wanted to do, or did it just kind of happened?

Mark Vande Hei: It wasnt something that I wanted to do, only because I didnt think it was possible. It was I think I was just trying to be too cool. I didnt want to say I wanted to be an astronaut some day, cause it felt a lot like saying I wanted to be Spider-Man or Superman someday, and it just, that wasnt something that I thought made sense.

I still am quite shocked that I actually have gotten to be an astronaut, and even getting to go through the interview process to be an astronaut I thought was amazing, and being able to say that Ive actually been to space as long as I have, Im still a little puzzled by that.

Brett McKay: Well, whats interesting about you and your career, unlike a lot of astronauts who get to NASA via the Air Force, theyre a pilot or fighter pilot, something like that, you had a military career but it was through the Army. So how did the Army lead you to NASA? Cause you typically dont think of Army and space in the same thing.

Mark Vande Hei: Yeah. Actually, we have pretty consistently had at least one Army officer in most, not every, but most astronaut candidate classes. Its something that the Army, unlike the other services though, initially it wasnt getting very well represented and we dont have high performance jet pilots in the Army. So in that regard. And that was what NASA is looking for initially, almost exclusively.

So at some point, if I understand correctly, the Army said, Hey, what can we do? Weve got some really good people, and then I think the Johnson Space Center director at the time said, Why you let us borrow a few of them, and then well see how they do? And so we would send typically helicopter pilots eventually, once that was a thing for the Army, sent in helicopter pilots here, and again, they werent high performance jet pilots, but they were great leaders and did a wonderful job, and so that was a way to get those folks in.

And for me, it was kind of a strange path. I had switched Because I got the opportunity to go to grad school as part of the preparation to teach at West Point, I was in grad school studying physics and the physics as I was most interested in was space physics. And then at the same time I was in grad school, the Army opened up a new career field called Space Operations, and I recognized that I was gonna spend five years away from the tactical environment I was familiar with in academia, and recognized that was gonna potentially, in a 20-year career that was gonna set me back quite a bit.

So when Space Operations came up as a possibility, I thought, Wow, I should This is something that might be uniquely suited to help out with. So I checked into it, I thought it sounded really interesting, and I managed to become a Space Operations Officer. And then it turned out that because this whole field was new, there was an Army astronaut who was talking to the general in charge of Army space operations and are talking about this new career field and how it would be nice to have the ability to broaden the experience base of Space Operations offices by having one of them actually work at the astronaut office and be exposed to human space flight in that regard, and then come back to the Army.

And so, shockingly at some point, I got invited to work at NASA, when I always thought it would be cool to work at NASA, but I never thought it would actually happen. So thats kind of a long story for how I ended up working at NASA in the first place. I actually started working at NASA in 2006.

Brett McKay: So youre more of like a liaison between the Army and NASA?

Mark Vande Hei: Actually, what I did when I was working here as what we call an engineer in the astronaut office was I was working as a capsule communicator, so my job was to have the astronauts perspective and work in the mission control center and understand enough of what the mission control, the flight controllers were talking about in the mission control team.

So that when the flight director said, Tell the crew this, I understood well enough what that was about to be able to explain to the crew. Which was a fantastic job. Youre sitting Youre communicating, history is happening, youre getting to watch what theyre doing in space as part of your work day. I just, I loved it. It was fantastic.

Brett McKay: Tell me a bit more about space operations in the Army. This is new to me, I didnt know this existed. What is the Army trying to do with space operations?

Mark Vande Hei: Granted, I have been out of it for quite a while, because the last time I was really involved in Army space operations was prior to 2006, so a lot of it might have changed, but the Army recognized that there is a lot with all the digitization thats coming on, that the Army can take great advantage of assets in space. But we werent really doing a good job of influencing investments in space that would benefit the Army, so we recognized that was a lack.

So that was part of it, getting some people in the Army, all with some experience in the field, pretty fairly senior officers at least with 10 years under their belt, typically back then, getting involved in space operations. And space operations in the Army was We could provide some promotional imagery, for example. There are some detection assets that we had access to.

Theres satellite communications we could help out with. It was really to help the military units were supporting take full advantage of the space assets that are available to the country.

Brett McKay: Gotcha. Okay, so you end up at NASA, youre working there, an opportunity arises for you to apply to be an astronaut. Whats the application process like? Its very thorough, I imagine.

Mark Vande Hei: Yeah, it actually starts out with something pretty simple. Its just you go to usajobs.gov, and its the same application process that you use if you want to be a fireman for the federal government. Every federal government job is out there, including astronaut. So thats where you start. And if you make it through the thousands of applications to actually get an interview, then it definitely gets more intense.

Brett McKay: How long does the application process take?

Mark Vande Hei: Oh gosh, its probably on the order of more than six months, I would think, because And thats really because every one of those applications gets reviewed by somebody, and weve had up to 18,000 applicants in some recent classes. And that process gets the, that number down to about 400 that are considered really highly qualified, and then we start checking references. And after that, once the references have been checked, well pick a 120 people or so to actually start coming in for the first round of interviews.

Brett McKay: Thats really competitive. And then so theres multiple rounds of interviews, and I imagine theres tests involved too. Are they doing psychological tests to make sure this is your fit for this position?

Mark Vande Hei: There are definitely psychological tests, and Im not sure if this is a good idea, but I admitted during my first interview week that after three hours of filling in the dots, I stopped. So at first, every dot I filled in I thought, What are they gonna think about me when I put this in there? and I was really, really putting a lot of thought into everything. And then after three hours of that I just didnt care.

I just wanted to finish the darn thing. So I told them that they had definitely gotten the real me at some point because I was, I just was exhausted by the process.

Brett McKay: Alright, so you go through this process, youre selected. Lets talk about training to become an astronaut. Now, I imagine a lot of people who apply to be an astronaut, theyve been training to be an astronaut their entire lives, either physically training and doing all the math and getting hours in the cockpit. What did your training look like after you got picked?

Mark Vande Hei: After I got picked. So weve got this astronaut candidate time period, you effectually call the people that are in that situation, you call them ass cans.

Its two years where you are Almost everybody passes. We have had some people not make it through. The training is everything you need to do to demonstrate potential to be assigned to a space flight. So we train people on EVAs in our neutral buoyancy lab, in a very large pool. We And when I say EVAs, I mean spacewalks.

We train people on the International Space Station systems, and when we had a shuttle program, were training people on the shuttle system as well. So whatever spacecraft we have available, we train people on those systems. We use a T-38, thats a NASA jet, that helps get people in an operational mindset.

The other things we do, weve got robotics training, thats a very challenging task too, learning how to operate the robotic arm that we have on the space station, so we put people through a course on that. And then its, our space station program is an international program so, and theres a lot of training that happens in Russia. So a big part of the training is a learning Russian, and that is no small task either.

Brett McKay: Are you now fluent in Russian?

Mark Vande Hei: I would say I have been pretty fluent in Russian, but its a surprisingly perishable skill. I think the most fluent I was in Russian was on the day I launched for my first flight. Because I had spent so much time in Russia learning how to be a co-pilot for a Russian spacecraft, and I felt pretty comfortable.

I was fluent enough to be able to talk on the radio very publicly, to make reports about their spacecraft in Russian and understand what they were saying. So in some regards yes, but theres so much further to go. Theres certainly topics, many, many topics I could get into where I would be very clueless about how to communicate.

Brett McKay: Weve had another astronaut on the podcast, and he mentioned part of the training was like wilderness survival training. Did you do that?

Mark Vande Hei: We have what we call Land Survival Training. Im not sure, I think youre talking about Terry Virts, is that correct?

Brett McKay: Yeah, yeah, correct. Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: Yeah, I listened to that podcast too. [chuckle] And actually, I was an office neighbor with Terry for a while. We do land survival training up in Maine, and back then, at least we used to, I think its changed now, it used to be run by the Navy. I think we switched down to the Army at Fort Rucker in Alabama. Alabama, I hope Im saying the right thing.

Brett McKay: Out of all the stuff you had to do, this two-year process, what was the most difficult component of your training that you had?

Mark Vande Hei: Oh I would say both the Russian and EVA training. And theyre very different. The EVA training, the space walk training is very physically demanding, but its also very mentally demanding, so its a combination of being in good enough shape to have enough mental capacity left over to do the right things in an environment where you really do not wanna mess that up.

And then the Russian is just so humbling. Its one of those things where I think if youre a person who really likes to know that youve got a grasp on this and this is gonna work out, its just something about language just feels like Its shocking that it works, but you dont Its either there or its not. Its a skill, and you dont really know Im not sure how to describe it. Its just challenging.

Brett McKay: So being in space without gravity is surprisingly hard on the body, and were gonna talk about that here in a bit. So what did you do as far as fitness training to get ready for a space mission?

Mark Vande Hei: I always liked exercising, so I dont think I changed anything specifically to get ready for a space flight, I just did the variety. I would look Honestly, I would look at the CrossFit website, Im not trying to condone any products, but they had a variety of workouts and I would pick one of their workouts and I would go for it.

I did recognize at my age if I try to do the prescribed workout set, I would hurt myself. So I recognized that if I hit muscle failure five times, it was time to stop that exercise or drop the weight to half of what I was doing, something like that. So I certainly had a learning process with how to survive those workouts.

Brett McKay: Does NASA just have astronauts prepare physically on their own, or do they set out like, Heres a suggested workout plan.? Or is it like, Well, its up to you.? It sounds like you just did whatever you wanted to do.

Mark Vande Hei: I did. Theres a wide variety of enthusiasm about exercise in the astronaut office, and certainly people tend to be much more on the fit side, but some people like to work out in the facilities we have here on Johnson Space Center, other people like to do it at home or in a different facility.

The nice thing is youve got a lot of resources here to help you out, so weve got some strength and conditioning and rehab specialists that are fantastic coaches. In fact, one of the things Ive been working on is snatches lately, and the strength coach that helps out, hes fantastic, so thats just a wonderful resource.

Brett McKay: Well, lets talk about exercise in space. What does that look like and how do you do that in zero-G?

Mark Vande Hei: Great question. We have three devices we use for exercise on the space station. One of them is called ARED, it means Advanced Resistive Exercise Device. Its a very large device we use for, the closest we can get to weightlifting, cause weightlifting doesnt really makes sense in space.

So the way it works, the way I like to describe it is imagine that you have a seesaw and theres a kid on the other side thats pulling up on their end of the seesaw and you wanna pull up on your end of the seesaw, and that kid always applies the same amount of force. So if you put the fulcrum right in the middle, youre gonna pull on To change the position of that seesaw youre gonna have to exert a little more force than the kid on the other side of the seesaw.

But lets say you wanna vary that, you can change the pivot point between you and that kid, and then you can make it a very small amount of force to a very large amount of force based on what mechanical advantage or disadvantage you give yourself. So hopefully that helps you visualize what Im talking about, but the way it works is we have that lever arm with a pivot point thats adjustable and allows us to change the force from 20 pounds to 600 pounds.

And that kid on the other side of the seesaw is a couple of vacuum cylinders. So when you pull up on the bar or the cable that youre pulling up on, you are forcing a couple of plates that are being pushed on by the air pressure in the space station, and thats what provides the force.

Brett McKay: What kind of things were you doing with this thing? Squats, shoulder presses?

Mark Vande Hei: You can do squats, shoulder presses, dead lifts, Romanian dead lifts. Curls, crunches, bench press.

Brett McKay: Pretty much anything.

Mark Vande Hei: Pretty much, although we tried doing things like thrusters, where you use the cable and you put the bar on your shoulders and go from a deep squat into a standing position with the bar over your head, but having that cable run across your chest and across your face makes it not quite the right position, so I actually didnt like doing that in the launcher. And then for another thing, I tried doing kettlebell swings using the cable, but you dont have momentum like you would. Thats one thing we really dont have.

So in a kettlebell swing, that momentum that you generate with your hips and your legs prevents you from, ideally prevents you from having to use your shoulders as much, but it started feeling like it was just a front raise for me when I was trying to do a kettlebell swing.

Brett McKay: So you got this resistance device. What other devices you have on there for physical fitness?

Mark Vande Hei: Weve got two devices we use for cardiovascular fitness. One is T2, its a treadmill, and thats interesting in space, because if you just ran on a treadmill, as soon youve pushed off with your foot, you would depart the treadmill. So what we have is a, what I would describe as a backpacking harness minus the backpack.

And that is a fairly comfortable harness which we attached some chains to on the side, and those chains attach to bungee cords, and you can adjust the length of the chains because in that case it changes the length of the bungee cords, and that allows you to adjust to At my height, it was about upto 130 pounds of force, so it still wasnt as much as I actually weight.

But I talked to Weve got some pretty impressive athletes in the astronaut office, and one of them mentioned to me that they actually just added a second set of bungee cords and doubled it, and I was blown away. Cause for some reason 130 pounds, it feels a lot like youre wearing 130 pounds on your back and your hips. So its not comfortable at all. It really starts to wear

In fact, there was I went for a two-hour walk one time, and by the time I finished, those hip pads had worn a hole in the skin on my hips. So its not comfortable, I was not a big fan of it. Although Ill tell you what, if I ever get to weigh only 80 pounds, I can run really, really fast.

Brett McKay: Whats the other cardio device?

Mark Vande Hei: The other cardio device is called CVIS, I dont know what every letter in the acronym means. But its an ergometer, its a bicycle. A bicycle without a seat cause you dont need it. And I love that one, thats a really challenging exercise device. You can go up to 350 watts. And yeah, I really got some brutal thigh burning workouts of that machine.

Brett McKay: And so this physical activity during space is important because when youre up in space, what happens to your body in zero-G?

Mark Vande Hei: Yeah, humans are very adaptable, so we adapt quickly to the space environment. Which means your body recognizes you dont need the skeletal structure to help you be able to stand upright on the floor, and you dont need as much musculature, so very quickly all those things would atrophy, and so its very, very important to workout.

Because of that, every single day NASA schedules an hour and a half for resistive exercise and an hour for the cardio exercise. Sometimes actually, because again I like exercising, I would try to do two hours of resistive exercise instead of an hour and a half, and I actually got up earlier in the morning just to be able to try to do that.

Brett McKay: Were gonna take quick break for a word from our sponsors.

And now back to the show. So when you went to space, what was your job on the space station? Why were you there and what were you doing?

Mark Vande Hei: Everything every crew member is doing on the space station is to support the science mission that weve got. Theres science were doing to help with exploration, theres science were doing that actually helps people out on the ground today. Theres technology demonstrations, for example, as well.

Every crew member, I think of them as laboratory technicians, where were not the scientist per se, were not the ones who design the experiments, a lot of times we dont do any observations or gather data for the experiments, and were certainly not analyzing the data and writing papers about those experiments later, the scientists are doing all that.

Were just making sure that what theyve dedicated so much of their life to is functioning as well as possible on the space station. Well help troubleshoot, make sure they have all the resources they need, and things like that.

Brett McKay: So what did a typical work day look like for you? What time would you wake up? Thats another thing, I guess time is different up in outer space, but how long was a work day for you?

Mark Vande Hei: The work day officially starts with a morning planning conference, typically at 07:30 in the morning, and ends with an evening planning conference that finishes around 07:30 at night. And that sounds like a really long day. Those are only the weekdays. Ideally, Monday through Friday would be that. We have weekends off with a couple hours of house cleaning on the weekend.

But in that 12 hours on a weekday, weve got an hour for lunch, and weve got the two and a half hours I mentioned for exercise. So it ends up being about an eight and a half hour work day.

Brett McKay: So you did space walks. What was your first space walk like? And did you have any sort of spiritual or awe-inspiring experience with it?

Mark Vande Hei: Its definitely awe-inspiring. I would say the spiritual stuff that I ran into was just looking out the windows on the space station before the space walks actually happened. I would say So as far as the emotions associated with doing a space walk, you study a lot to make sure youre ready, cause its a very public eight-hour shift, or six and a half hours, seven hour shift working outside.

The first emotion I remember is the sense of the lighting changing inside of the crew lock. So imagine youre in this clunky space suit with another crewmate and youre head to toe, and the more experienced crew member or the person in charge of the space walk is the one who opens the hatch.

And so on my first space walk I was EV-2, extra vehicular crew member number two, the less experienced person, and I didnt have my face over the hatch, I had my feet over the hatch. But when Randy Bresnik, was in charge of that EVA, opened up that hatch, there was the bright light shining, reflecting off of the Earth into that space that previously just had artificial lighting, and it was clearly outdoor lighting, it was like looking through a storm door on a winter day in Minnesota. It was just very bright all of a sudden, an I had the sensation that, Whoa, thats outside, and this is real, this is really gonna happen.

Once I actually got outside, it was nighttime, which probably made it a little bit easier on me, and the neutral buoyancy lab that I mentioned earlier, does such a good job of making us familiar with the terrain of the outside of the space station that that seemed like a very familiar environment. And all I can say about Its just hard to get your head wrapped around the distances that youre looking at.

When youre holding onto a spacecraft going at 5 miles a second and its dark outside, its just, the distance between you and the Earth is hard to grasp. The distance between you and the stars, this vast openness that youre in this space suit in. Its hard to get your head wrapped around it. And honestly you got a lot of work to do so you dont wanna spend too much time trying to dwell on it.

Brett McKay: Yeah. And some people dont realize this about the EVAs, this is a gruelling thing. Youre in there, like you said, for six hours.

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Podcast #815: What It's Like to Spend a Year in Space - Art of Manliness