Alien: Isolation - Part 48 - Back on the Station
In this part of my Alien: Isolation gameplay we get back on the station and now we need to make our way back to the Marshal #39;s office. Check it out and feel free to post a comment, rate the...
By: DeathLives Gaming
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Black Tooth Moan - Space Station X (unknown intruder mix)
https://soundcloud.com/black-tooth-moan https://soundcloud.com/leviathant An electronic remix I made of a Black Tooth Moan track, as performed by my humble noisemaking robot ensemble.
By: Matthew Dunphy
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Black Tooth Moan - Space Station X (unknown intruder mix) - Video
Quit or Continue episode 2 - Alien: Isolation
In space, no-one can hear the Quit or Continue podcast. Which is a disaster, quite frankly, as this time around we #39;re giving Alien: Isolation the full podcast review treatment. Join regular...
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A European Space Agency (ESA) experiment aboard the International Space Station (ISS) suggests that space travelers may have less to worry about when it comes to radiation ... thanks to a phantom. Called the Matroshka, the "phantom" is a plastic mannequin that is the key component of the first comprehensive study of the effects of radiation on astronauts on long-term space missions that indicates that the hazard may not be as severe as previously thought.
Of all the perils of space travel, the most pervasive as it is intangible is radiation. Each day that an astronaut spends outside the protective confines of the Earth's atmosphere brings an increased chance of cancer and other conditions. According to ESA, a person on the ground soaks up about 2.5 mSv/year, while an astronaut on the space station can receive up to 1 mSv/day. This is the reason the European Astronaut Corps limits its members to 500 mSv/year and 1Sv for an entire career. (Sv or sievert is a unit used to measure of the health effect of small amounts of radiation on the body).
Surprisingly, despite this awareness, very little is actually known about how exactly how much and what kind of radiation an astronaut is actually exposed to. It's to fill this gap that the Matroshka was sent to the ISS. Named after the famous Russian nesting dolls, it was built and operated by ESA in cooperation with Roscosmos and various European institutions, and was flown to the station in 2004. Its purpose was to measure the type and amount of radiation astronauts are exposed to both inside and outside the space station over a period of several years.
Matroshka covered by a container simulating a spacesuit (Photo: DLR)
The Matroshka is technically a phantom. That is, a radiological doll designed as a stand-in for a human being while testing radiation equipment or, in this case, space radiation. It consists of a head and torso made of 33 horizontal cross sections of plastic, each measuring 2.5 cm (1 in) thick. Layers are used, so the mannequin can be assembled around a central dowel, which makes it easy to install and remove sensors. Each layer is made of a special plastic that simulates the soft tissues of the body with different densities standing in for the muscles, liver, spleen, lungs, and so forth. In addition, there are pieces of real human bone inserted into the cross sections to provide the proper radiological properties and a battery of sensors.
Space radiation is composed mainly of cosmic rays made up of protons and other heavy ions instead of the more common gamma rays found in terrestrial radiation sources. Since there are many different kinds of different radiation, so a number of different active and passive sensors are needed to detect them. The Matroshka includes about a dozen different sensors, including detectors for recording pressure and temperature.
Among the sensors are six thousand passive thermoluminescent detectors many of which were made by the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Krakw, Poland. They are constructed of doped lithium fluoride placed in plastic tubes set in a 3D lattice. The dopants upset the detector's crystalline structure, which sets up "forbidden" energy levels that capture electrons generated by cosmic rays. When the tubes are returned to Earth and heated in a laboratory, they release light in proportion to the amount of radiation they've absorbed.
The Matroshka phantom with astronauts S. Krikaliew and J. Philips on board of the International Space Station (Photo: NASA)
Over the Matroshka is a not very fashionable jacket, which isn't just there for looks. It also acts as a mounting for cables and additional detectors. The latter need to be placed on the outside of the mannequin in order to measure incoming radiation and skin exposure, and to simulate the dosimeters carried by all space station personnel.
From 2004 to 2009, the Matroshka sat inside one of the Russian modules on the ISS, but radiation hazards outside the station are many times greater than inside, so the phantom made a spacewalk for the first such exposure measurements ever made. Like a human astronaut, the Matroshka was clad in a spacesuit or, at least, a simulated one made of layers of carbon fiber and plastic and filled with dry oxygen gas.
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Plastic phantom shows space travel may be safer than thought
ESA's fifth and last Automated Transfer Vehicle tested a new technique before docking with the International Space Station in August, at the same time revealing the orbital complex in a new light.
ATV Georges Lemaitre demonstrated a set of European sensors that offers future improvements on the autonomous rendezvous and docking that these ferries have completed five times since 2008. ESA's goal is to perform an automated rendezvous further from home - perhaps near Mars or with an 'uncooperative' target such as an inert object.
Seeing through an eclipse During Georges Lemaitre's rendezvous using its proven system, the Laser Infrared Imaging Sensors, or LIRIS, experiment was turned on some two and a half hours and 3500 m from the Space Station. All of the sensors worked as expected and a large amount of data was recorded and stored on hard disks in ATV's cargo hold.
The disks were retrieved by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst on 29 August and returned to Earth in Soyuz TMA-12M in September. The information is now being compared against the results from ATV's normal navigation sensors.
With ATV-5 pointing directly at the Station, the LIRIS infrared cameras tracked the weightless research centre perfectly despite several 30-minute periods in darkness when the Sun was eclipsed by Earth and traditional cameras would have gone blind.
The image above was taken 70 m from the Station - the first showing the complex in this configuration. Ahead of an ATV docking, the Station turns its solar wings to avoid GPS navigation signals bouncing off the structure and confusing the incoming craft.
Four days before docking, ATV flew 7 km below the Station to check the long-range capability of the infrared cameras. A first look at the readings confirms LIRIS' ability to track targets from a distance.
Laser Radar LIRIS includes a lidar - like a radar but using light - that pulses laser beams over a mirror to collect 3D data at high resolution. The lidar also registers the amount of reflected light, which can provide clues on the type of material it is scanning.
Russia's Zvezda module, where Georges Lemaitre now sits, shows up in green from 30 m, while the Soyuz was 15 m further away (yellow). The Station's main truss is in purple, 40 m from Zvezda.
The image on the right was created from the same data but shows how much light was reflected from each point. The Station's retroreflector used for ATV's normal laser docking sensors shows up brightly, just as the designers intended.
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You may know opals as fiery gemstones, but something special called OPALS is floating above us in space. On the International Space Station, the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) is demonstrating how laser communications can speed up the flow of information between Earth and space, compared to radio signals.
"OPALS has shown that space-to-ground laser communications transmissions are practical and repeatable," said Matthew Abrahamson, OPALS mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"As a bonus, OPALS has collected an enormous amount of data to advance the science of sending lasers through the atmosphere. We look forward to continuing our testing of this technology, which sends information to and from space faster than with radio signals."
Laser communication science has Earth benefits, too. Faster downlinks from space could mean people receive higher-definition video from both satellites orbiting our planet and spacecraft farther into space, including NASA's Mars rovers. Laser communication technology also has the potential to provide faster Internet connections in remote areas on Earth. Anyone with an interest in high-speed, high-quality downloads may benefit from this technology -- including researchers, engineers and consumers.
OPALS has completed its four-month prime mission. In the next phase of the mission, OPALS scientists will look at how adaptive optics can increase the efficiency of the optical communications link. The lessons learned from OPALS will make future optical links more robust and reliable.
OPALS launched to the space station aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule in April. The payload was able to establish an optical communications link when its laser locked onto a ground beacon emitted by the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory's ground station at JPL's Table Mountain Observatory in Wrightwood, California. The technology uses a beacon with four individual lasers to average the effects of atmospheric turbulence.
"Four lasers from the ground station travel through the sky toward the space station. Under clear, dark background conditions, it's very easy for the payload to acquire the ground beacon. Daylight conditions have proven more challenging, but we are working on increasing capabilities during the day as well, through software enhancements," Abrahamson said.
OPALS had 18 successful passes from Table Mountain: nine during daylight and nine during nighttime. The payload was able to track the ground receiver with stunning accuracy.
"At times, weather was a challenge, with clouds obscuring the lasers. The payload showed the capability to reacquire the signal after cloud blockage," Abrahamson said.
OPALS had its first success on June 5, a night pass lasting 148 seconds. It sent a copy of the same video (with the message, "Hello, World!") every 3.5 seconds. With traditional downlink methods, the 175-megabit video would take 10 minutes to transmit.
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AstroButch [Butch Wilmore] has set up our Xmas tree in the lab and hung socks for us, tweeted astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from the International Space Station Dec. 7, 2014. Credit: Samantha Cristoforetti/Twitter
Weve seen a vital telescope undergo repairs, an emergency replacement of part of a space stations cooling system, and even a tree made of food cans. Learn more about these fun holiday times below.
Reading from above the moon (Apollo 8, 1969)
In this famous reading from the Bible, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders shared their experience looking at the Moon on Dec. 24, 1968. The Apollo 8 crew was the first to venture to lunar orbit, just seven months before the Apollo 11 crew made it all the way to the surface.
Food can Christmas tree (Skylab 4, 1973)
A Christmas tree created out of food cans by the Skylab 4 crew in 1973. Credit: NASA
Living on the Skylab station taught astronauts the value of improvisation, such as when the first crew (under NASAs instructions) repaired a sunshield to stop electronics and people from roasting inside. Skylab 4 took the creativity to Christmas when they created a tree out of food cans.
Hubble Space Telescope repair (STS-103, 1999)
The Hubble Space Telescope during a 1999 repair mission with STS-103 crew members Mike Foale (left, for NASA) and Claude Nicollier (European Space Agency). Credit: NASA
When the Hubble Space Telescope was in hibernation due to a failed gyroscope, the STS-103 crew made repairs in December 1999 that culminated with the final spacewalk on Christmas Day. The telescope remains in great shape to this day, following another repair mission in 2009.
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Crazy Space Christmases: Moon Readings, Food Cans And Emergency Repairs
PASS presents: Shabaka Hutchings + The Brother Moves On - A Comet Is Coming
Stories About Music in Africa Throughout 2014 Chimurenga has been connecting with cutting-edge artists and music collectives from around the continent to prepare unique recordings for Pan...
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PASS presents: Shabaka Hutchings + The Brother Moves On - A Comet Is Coming - Video
Astronauts still have to file their taxes on April 15 every year -- even if they're floating in outer space.
HONG KONG (CNNMoney)
Yes, that's right. Astronauts are on the hook to file taxes by April 15, even if they're orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth on a long-term mission.
The IRS -- the much-feared enforcer of the U.S. tax code -- makes no exceptions. Experts say astronauts don't get special treatment, no matter how far away they are from the planet.
NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao -- commander of the tenth expedition to the International Space Station -- was in orbit when tax day rolled around in 2005. Chiao had no choice but to manage his taxes from space.
But how exactly did that happen?
"Get someone to help you out on the ground," Chiao said. The mission commander's sister is an accountant, and she was able to file papers on his behalf to extend his tax return deadline.
"He certainly had a good, valid reason [for the extension]," said his sister, Judy Chiao Smith.
Related: This job has the world's worst tax return
After eight months living on the International Space Station, Chiao returned to earth on April 24, 2005 -- just nine days after tax day -- and got busy working on his tax return.
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Space Station 23 November 2014
Space Station 23 November 2014 Time: Sun Nov 23 5:41 AM, Visible: 2 min, Max Height: 81 degrees, Appears: SSE, Disappears: ESE Note that the cameras are givi...
By: Martin Perrett
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Dec 05, 2014 | International Space Station Passes Over the Eastern Flank of Super Typhoon Hagupit
BREAKING: #Hagupit (#RubyPH) strengthens to super #typhoon again. 150 mph max sust #39;d winds, per latest JTWC advisory. Note: Eye of the typhoon not visible in...
By: earthspace101
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No Man #39;s Sky News: Gameplay Walkthrough Trailer: Space Stations, Planets, Galaxy Map
NEW! No Man #39;s Sky gameplay walkthrough trailer shows No Man #39;s Sky space station, ships, planets, on PS4 PC. Stay tuned to Open World Games for more No Man #39;s Sky let #39;s play, space combat ...
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No Man's Sky News: Gameplay Walkthrough Trailer: Space Stations, Planets, & Galaxy Map - Video
ss13 most crowded maintenance tunnel 2014
a good reason for everyone to enter the tunnels of the space station suddenly appears...then things get cramped.
By: Johannhawk
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International Space station commander Chris Hadfield looks down at the Earth from orbit. Photograph: NASA/REX
Youre in Saskatchewan at the moment, but by the time Observer readers see this, youll be in London and then off to various points of the UK and Ireland. Are you looking forward to it? Im really looking forward to it. And its where my familys all originally from we only came to Canada a hundred years ago.
Youll be talking about your new book, You Are Here, a collection of your photographs from the International Space Station. Was it fun to put together? It was a delight. It was a lot of work, because there are tens of thousands of pictures that you take over the month up there, most of them in a hurry you just had a few rushed minutes at the window. It wasnt until over a year later that I actually had time to filter through them all it was like looking at pictures from your childhood or from your wedding and going, oh, look at this! I hadnt even noticed that!
The pictures are amazing from the Yorkshire moors to the deserts of Iran, the Bolivian rainforest and fishing boats in the East China Sea... So many people ask: so what does it look like? And even when I was up there, there was a huge clamouring for people to see their own home town, their own part of the world, places that theyd been. And so I felt a great compunction to do my best to take everybody on one tour around the world, as if we were floating elbow to elbow there, and I was being their tour guide to the world.
One thing the book seems to say is were all connected. Were all co-existing on this planet, and that sense of our little circle and everything else being some big, nebulous them, I think is a dangerous one for us all. Im very pleased to have seen something different for myself. This is my best effort to show everybody what the world truly looks like, and let them draw their own conclusions.
Youve done something that only a tiny number of people will ever do and it started when you saw the moon landings as a child. What was that like? It was pivotal. It was probably most like an enormous door of invitation opening. The improbability of it, but the realisation that impossible things happen, was a wonderful thing to learn at nine years old.
You resolved then to become an astronaut - even though youre frightened of heights, arent you? Well, I think everybody should be! Thats self-preservation. If youre standing on the edge of a cliff, your body ought to be screaming at you to get back, because one small gust of wind or loose pebble and youre off and done. Im not afraid if I know I cant fall, and I think thats the difference. Its not an irrational fear: its just a self-protecting fear. But its what you do with fear that really matters.
You once temporarily lost your vision on a spacewalk. Surely that must have been frightening? In order to accomplish something youre dreaming about, youre probably going to have to face some sort of fear, and the difference between fear and danger is the real key. What is the actual danger? And that applies whether youre referring to crossing a busy street, or doing a spacewalk. I stopped for a moment and thought: OK, so I cant see, but theres really not any increased danger, I can still talk and think and hold on. The guy whos out here with me can help stuff me back into the air lock, and I can sort of feel my way back in.
So you conquered the fear and carried on... And the counterpoint to being blind during that spacewalk was the 10 orbits of the world that I did where I could see fine. The view is revelationary; it is stupefyingly beautiful. Youre not on the world looking up, youre in the universe, its all around you, and youre looking at the world as a separate form. Its turning so relentlessly, and it looks nothing like a globe, its not smooth and shiny, where all the countries are different colours, its this big, complex, textured, multicoloured living thing next to you, and the blackness of everything else is just on the other side. And if I had justallowed fear to dominate my life, I would never have seen any of that.
Now that youve retired from going into space, how much do you miss it? Its not over for me at all. It wasnt a singular event, it was part of the 21years that I served as an astronaut. Its not like I was sitting about twiddling my thumbs and then I was doing a spacewalk, and that was the peak and everything else was some sort of ditch or valley. It just wasnt that way. I see it as just a richness, a great experience that I count on in order to be who I am now. Just because youve eaten ambrosia or truffles or Black Forest cake once doesnt mean that youll never eat again, or that no other food is good.
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Portugal's Minister of Education and Science Nuno Crato said Wednesday that Portugal will integrate two scientific space exploration programs including the International Space Station, according to Portuguese Lusa News Agency.
"There is a lot of good news or Portugal, which will continue collaborating with the European Space Agency (ESA) ... and will now incorporate the program for International Space Station and the program for Lunar Exploration," Nuno Crato told Lusa, after participating at a meeting at the ESA in Luxembourg.
Ministers of the ESA met Tuesday in Luxembourg, and agreed to develop new launchers, as well as approving investment in the international space station and space exploration programs.
Crato said that Portugal benefited through its participation with ESA "on various levels," like Portuguese scientists getting involved with the space agency's work and enabling the country to use more sophisticated technology.
"Being part of the International Space Station is very important for us ... The program for lunar exploration is a new program and we will join it from the start. So our software development companies will participate in this effort and will be able to make orders from these programs," Crato added.
The next ESA meeting will take place in Switzerland in 2016.
Source: Xinhua News Agency
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Portugal to integrate two scientific space exploration programs: media
BEIJING: A leading Chinese space scientist said today that the country could land a rover on Mars by 2020, build a manned space station by 2022 and test a heavy carrier rocket by 2030, as Beijing expands its space programme in a race with India to explore the red planet.
A feasibility study on China's first Mars mission is completed and the goal is now to send an orbiter and rover to Mars, Lei Fanpei, chairman of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told state-run Xinhua news agency.
There has been no official announcement about a Mars probe yet, but Lei expects a Long March-5 carrier, still at the development stage, to take the orbiter into a Martian orbit by 2020 from a new launch site on south China's Hainan province.
The communist giant made an unsuccessful attempt to reach Mars in 2011 aboard a Russian rocket, but failed to complete the mission because of an accident during orbital transfer, Xinhua report said.
China unveiled its Mars rover, being developed to scurry the floor of the red planet for signs of water and life, at an air show last month.
It plans to test the new machine in the rugged terrain of Tibet as India's Mars Orbiter Mission Mangalyaan is orbiting Mars since 24 September after being launched on 5 November last year by the Indian Space Research Organisation. New US spacecraft Orion, which tested successfully, plans to carry astronauts beyond earth's orbit perhaps to Mars and return.
China plans to deploy a robot similar to the one it sent to Moon and reportedly plans to test in Tibet.
Lei said China's manned space station program is progressing steadily. Various modules, vehicles and ground facilities are nearing readiness.
The lab hopes to replace Mir, the Russian space station which was expected to retire by that time.
Development and manufacture of major space products are at key stages, including the second space lab Tiangong-2, the Tianzhou-1 cargo ship, Long March-7 rockets and Shenzhou-11 spacecraft.
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Astronaut Chris Hadfield plays his guitar in the International Space Station. Photograph: Nasa/Rex
The next giant leap for mankind should be back on the moon not Mars, the astronaut Chris Hadfield has said.
Famous for sporting a military moustache, tweeting spacewalk selfies and strumming David Bowie songs on board the International Space Station (his hugely popular cover of Space Oddity has recently been reposted on YouTube with Bowies consent), Hadfield was the first Canadian to walk in space and became the first Canadian commander of the ISS when he took the reins last year on his final space mission.
Speaking at a Guardian Live event at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Sunday, Hadfield criticised the current scramble to put an astronaut on the red planet. If we started going to Mars any time soon everybody would die, he said. We dont know what we are doing yet. We have to have a bunch of inventions between now and Mars.
He believes our level of unpreparedness is even worse than that of the 1845 expedition to chart the Northwest Passage, an attempt which ended in tragedy with the death of the entire party including its leader, Sir John Franklin, who was a founder of the Royal Geographical Society. We are previous to Franklin in our ability to go to Mars right now, said Hadfield.
Hadfields speech to a packed auditorium about his experiences in space was set against a backdrop of breathtaking images from his latest book, You are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes.
The title of the book a collection of astonishing photographs taken by Hadfield from the ISS refers to the time it takes the space station to orbit Earth.
But, while praising the engineers who built the Orion spacecraft that was launched last week in Nasas first step towards a new series of manned space missions, Hadfield stressed the next big step should be to construct a permanent lunar base.
That is a great vehicle, he said of Orion. But where we are going to go next is the moon. Thats where we are going to go because it just makes sense. It is only three days away and we can invent so many things.
Hadfields comments come just days after he denounced the privately funded Mars One mission in the online magazine Matter, claiming the ambitious project is technologically unprepared. Theres a great, I dont know, self-defeating optimism in the way that this project has been set up, he warned.
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Next giant leap for mankind should be to moon, not Mars, says Chris Hadfield
Astronauts still have to file their taxes on April 15 every year -- even if they're floating in outer space.
HONG KONG (CNNMoney)
Yes, that's right. Astronauts are on the hook to file taxes by April 15, even if they're orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth on a long-term mission.
The IRS -- the much-feared enforcer of the U.S. tax code -- makes no exceptions. Experts say astronauts don't get special treatment, no matter how far away they are from the planet.
NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao -- commander of the tenth expedition to the International Space Station -- was in orbit when tax day rolled around in 2005. Chiao had no choice but to manage his taxes from space.
But how exactly did that happen?
"Get someone to help you out on the ground," Chiao said. The mission commander's sister is an accountant, and she was able to file papers on his behalf to extend his tax return deadline.
"He certainly had a good, valid reason [for the extension]," said his sister, Judy Chiao Smith.
Related: This job has the world's worst tax return
After eight months living on the International Space Station, Chiao returned to earth on April 24, 2005 -- just nine days after tax day -- and got busy working on his tax return.
See more here:
Two days ago, America sent a spaceship soaring to the stars -- and we didn't need a Russian rocket to do it.
At 7:05 a.m. EST,Friday, Dec. 5, United Launch Alliance (working on contract to NASA), began the EFT-1 mission, sending anOrion spacecraft built by Lockheed Martin into space atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket built by Boeing . (Together, Lockheed and Boeing make up two halves of the NASA contractor United Launch Alliance, aka ULA.)
NASA promo shot of EFT-1 launch; YouTube still
The EFT-1 mission was scheduled to last just under four-and-a-half hours, and aimed to test the workings of America's first spaceship, capable of manned interplanetary flight. It also marked NASA's first step in a 20-year plan to put American astronauts on Mars sometime after 2030.
I won't keep you in suspense: The test was a success. After an initial one-day postponement from the Thursday target window, the rockets worked flawlessly in Friday's exercise. EFT-1 went up, orbited the Earth, then blasted higher, turned around, reentered Earth's atmosphere, and splashed down in the Atlantic right on schedule.
NASA promo shot of EFT-1 splashdown; YouTube still
So ... does this mean that America's reliance upon Russian rockets to put astronauts into orbit (and beyond) is finally at an end?
Not yet, but soon As you may recall, earlier this year a series of unfortunate events in Europe culminated in America imposing economic sanctions on Russia -- and Russia retaliating with a mortal threat to the U.S. space program. Unless America lifted its sanctions, Russia would cut off the supply of RD-180 rocket engines essential to ULA's ability to lift satellites into space. Simultaneously, Russia vowed to deny U.S. astronauts access to its Soyuz spacecraft -- currently the only craft capable of sending U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station.
Responding to these threats, Lockheed Martin promised to team up with an American rocket-tech company to develop a "next-generation liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon first stage" rocket engine capable of replacing the RD-180 on its Atlas V rockets. " Multiple " design contracts were signed in June, with the aim of getting a design approved this year -- and launching a prototype in 2019.
Then, in September, Lockheed announced that it has made a selection: Blue Origin, the privately held space-tech start-up owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, will develop a new liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas (LO/LNG) "BE-4" rocket engine jointly with ULA.
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To Reach the International Space Station, Lockheed Martin Orders a Rocket From Amazon.com
Space Station 13 NCS Cyberiad (Shift 3-2) - DerpOS
Player #39;s Note: Standby for *spoiler*... TV Tropes page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SpaceStation13 BYOND: http://www.byond.com/ Paradise ...
By: Tully Burnalot
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