Daily Archives: April 23, 2021

Elon Musks SpaceX launched its third crewed rocket for NASA, sending a further four astronauts into orbit and marking the first time the company achieved the takeoff with both a pre-used capsule and rocket.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 5:49 a.m. ETwith a low rumble and leaving behind a trail of fire and smoke in the predawn darknessfrom NASAs Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. It is set to autonomously dock with the International Space Station roughly 24 hours later, joining an earlier group of four astronauts who traveled there on SpaceXs first operational mission in November and three others also on board.

The launch marks a number of firsts for SpaceX. It is the first time that two of the companys Crew Dragon capsules will be simultaneously docked at the ISS. It is also the first time the rocket has carried two international partners, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agencys Akihiko Hoshide and Frenchman Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency. They join Americans Shane Kimbrough, the missions commander, and Megan McArthur, the spacecrafts pilot. The crew will be stationed at the space station for a six-month mission.

Another first: Both the rocket and capsule used in Fridays launch were reused from earlier launches. The rocket was previously used in the first operational launch in November, and the capsule comes from Mays test launch. The mission, code named Crew-2, originally scheduled for Thursday, had been postponed due to poor weather conditions along the flight path.

The Falcon 9 left its launchpad two seconds past 5:49 a.m., providing 1.7 million pounds of thrust and accelerating the capsule across the morning sky and reaching a velocity of close to 17,000 miles an hour. Roughly 12 minutes later, the capsule safely separated from the rockets upper stage, ground controllers said.

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SpaceX Launches Crewed Rocket Into Space in Latest NASA Mission - The Wall Street Journal

The latest ARK Invest Fund, the ARK Space Exploration & Innovation ETF (NYSEARCA:ARKX), is a pure play on Cathie Wood.

Source: Shutterstock

I call Wood the tech whisperer, thanks to the success of funds like ARK Innovation (NYSEARCA:ARKK), up 140% over the last year. Woods investment thesis is that she picks disruptive tech companies that can outperform the market, or even the tech sector.

This thesis makes sense to me. Knowing where technology is going, and getting out ahead of it, has given me a million-dollar retirement. But no thesis works forever, especially if everyone piles into it. If everyone has bought, theres no place to go but down.

So, whats the deal with this latest ARK fund?

ARK Space Exploration and Innovation is an exchange-traded fund, meaning you can buy it or sell it like a stock. Unlike market index funds like Vanguard Total Income (NYSEARCA:VTI), ARK funds are actively managed. In this way ARKX stock is a throwback to the old days of stock picking by professionals.

ARKX has been trading for less than a month, so its hard to generalize its performance. So far, its up 1% while the general market is up 5%. It was due to open for trade April 22 at $20.56, 6 cents above the offering price. Net assets are just $63.3 million, and the expense ratio is 0.75%.

The problem for the fund, as our Wayne Duggan wrote recently, is that there arent any true space exploration stocks. SpaceX is still private. Other space launch companies are highly diversified.

This is where the & Innovation part of the name comes into play. As of April 22, ARKX lists investments in 40 companies, few of which have anything to do with space. About 4.89% of the fund was in JD.Com (NASDAQ:JD), a Chinese e-commerce company that I own and like. But shipping with drones to remote Chinese villages, or fancy Shanghai restaurants, does not a space company make.

Of 40 holdings in the ARKX portfolio, I own shares in four. In addition to JD.Com, these are Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN), Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Alibaba Group Holding (NYSE:BABA).

Duggans criticism of the current holdings is based on Trimble (NASDAQ:TRMB), a 43-year old company that is ARKX largest holding, with a share of 8.92%. Trimble is also a big holding with the The 3D Printing ETF (NYSEARCA:PRNT), which is ARKX second-largest holding with 5.99%.

Trimble is mainly a satellite navigation company. It was called Trimble Navigation until 2016. The new CEO, Robert Painter, had been chief financial officer until last year and has been with Trimble about 15 years. He recently sold almost $560,000 in Trimble shares.I see no problem with any of that. Satellite-based navigation makes sense as an ARKX holding. Trimble stock is up 150% over the last year. The market cap is $20.3 billion. Even CEOs must eat.

My problem is that this is mostly a defense fund. Kratos Defense and Security Solutions (NASDAQ:KTOS), L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHS), Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), and Boeing (NYSE:BA) are all big defense contractors among the 10 largest holdings. Then there are some true outliers. Whats Deere (NYSE:DE) doing here. Uh, Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX)?

In the end whats in the ARKX stock portfolio right now is irrelevant.

Buying this fund means buying Wood and her team. Youre buying their strategies. Youre buying their trading savvy. I doubt half the current holdings will be in the fund a year from now.

ARKX is an active trading fund that depends for its success on the people running it. If you believe Wood and her team can find you stocks that benefit from space, buy it. Youre getting in on the ground floor.

At the time of publication, Dana Blankenhorn directly owned shares in VTI, JD, BABA, AMZN and NVDA.

Dana Blankenhorn has been a financial and technology journalist since 1978. He is the author of Technologys Big Bang: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow with Moores Law, available at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com, tweet him at @danablankenhorn, or subscribe to his Substack newsletter.

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ARKX: ARK Space Exploration & Innovation Is Another Bet on Cathie Wood - Investorplace.com

History has been made on Mars: NASAs Ingenuity helicopter just achieved the first powered and controlled flight on another planet. Ingenuity is a small, lightweight, drone-like helicopter that was carried on the Perseverance rover. They launched from Earth together in July 2020 and landed on Mars on Feb. 19, 2021.

Ingenuitys sole mission is to demonstrate that flight on another planet is feasible. In the early morning of April 19, Ingenuity spun up its rotors, climbed to a height of three metres where it hovered for about 30 seconds, performing a rotation while doing so, and then safely landed back on the surface of Mars.

And just like that, humans can now fly on other planets. This technological demonstration will help scientists create new missions to Mars and other places in the solar system using not just rovers, but helicopters as well.

Whether youre on Earth or Mars, in order to achieve flight, you need to generate lift. An aircraft does this by forcing air to move around its wings or rotors. The amount of lift generated is related to how fast the air is moving over the wings, and how dense the air is. If the air is very dense, it will generate more lift at a given airspeed than if it was less dense; the less atmosphere, the lower the force of lift generated.

On Mars, the atmosphere is just one per cent the pressure of Earths, which makes generating lift much more difficult. The surface gravity on Mars is about 40 per cent of Earths. These conditions, and more, were painstakingly tested on Earth before launching to Mars.

NASA engineers designed Ingenuity with this in mind. Its rotor blades are 1.2 metres long. That is very large in comparison to its mass, which is just 1.8 kilograms (roughly the weight of a laptop). The rotors also spin much faster than would be required on Earth to lift the same amount of mass.

At the time of Ingenuitys groundbreaking flight, Mars was about 290 million kilometres away from Earth. At that distance, it takes light and thus, communications about 16 minutes to get to Mars, and another 16 minutes to get back to us. This delay makes it impossible to have a human fly the helicopter live, because any command you give Ingenuity is going to take 16 minutes before it gets there, and by that time, the helicopter could be face down in the dirt.

That means Ingenuity needs to be able to make flight decisions on its own. When Ingenuity spins up its rotors and starts to lift off from the ground, it must react to wind gusts, temperature changes or any other random environmental concern in order to achieve a successful flight.

Ingenuity was deployed to the surface of Mars by Perseverance on April 3, where it performed its first technological demonstration: surviving the night. The temperature on Mars can plunge to -80C at night; the helicopter needed to prove its on-board battery and heating systems were up to the challenge.

Next, Ingenuity performed a variety of pre-flight tests to evaluate all the systems and ensure flight readiness. However, during a high-speed spin test on April 9, Ingenuitys computer systems identified a possible problem and shut the helicopter off. Ingenuity sent back data, and NASA engineers determined that a software fix was needed. Shortly thereafter, the helicopter performed and completed the high-speed spin test.

Now that Ingenuity has proven that it can fly, it will be directed to do a few more test flights before its mission ends. In some of these flights, Ingenuity could fly over 300 metres in distance.

Achieving flight on another planet means that our approach to planetary exploration will change. When we first started exploring Mars, we used landers that are unable to move after theyve landed. Then in 1997, the Pathfinder mission deployed the Sojourner rover, a technological demonstration of roving capabilities (and awesomely featured in the feature film The Martian). The success of the Sojourner rover was later seen in the deployment of the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and more recently in Curiosity and Perseverance.

Now, with the success of Ingenuity, what will Mars exploration look like moving forward? Helicopters will be able to study locations that even rovers cannot, like the side of a cliff, up a particularly steep hill, or within a field of really large rocks that the rover cannot navigate. A helicopter will be able to go much farther than the tens of kilometres a rover can.

With helicopter missions, scientists will be able to cover hundreds of kilometres of Martian surface. With that type of capability, our understanding of Mars will grow.

And its not just limited to Mars. At this moment, a mission to Saturns largest moon Titan is currently being developed. It is called Dragonfly and will launch towards Titan in 2026 or 2027.

Titan has an atmosphere that is about 60 per cent thicker than Earths. Using four rotors, Dragonfly will be the first science mission to use flight as its primary mode of transportation. It will fly across Titan learning about its chemistry and possible habitability.

What Ingenuity is doing right now will help inform the engineers of Dragonfly how to build their spacecraft. Its incredible to see how much technology has changed in just over a century. What will the next century look like?

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NASAs Ingenuity helicopter flight on Mars opens up new frontiers in space exploration - The Conversation US

"A whole new way to explore the alien terrain in our solar system is now at our disposal," said Nottingham Trent University astronomer Daniel Brown.

This first test flight - with more to come by Ingenuity - holds great promise.

Up to five increasingly ambitious flights are planned, and they could lead the way to a fleet of Martian drones in decades to come, providing aerial views, transporting packages and serving as lookouts for human crews. On Earth, the technology could enable helicopters to reach new heights, doing things like more easily navigating the Himalayas.

Ingenuity's team has until the beginning of May to complete the test flights so that the rover can get on with its main mission: collecting rock samples that could hold evidence of past Martian life, for return to Earth a decade from now.

The team plans to test the helicopter's limits, possibly even wrecking the craft, leaving it to rest in place forever, having sent its data back home.

Nasa is planning a second flight for the helicopter on Thursday. The helicopter is fitted with two microphones and the plan is to record sound on one of the later flights.

Dr Bob Balaram, Ingenuity's chief engineer, said that this could open the door for similar flightattempts in the future on Venus and Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

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Nasa flies Ingenuity helicopter on Mars in 'Wright brothers moment' which could revolutionise space exploration - The Telegraph

We already know that space missions impact the astronauts involved in a myriad of ways. From the physical challenges (loss of bone density, changes in the muscular system or the heart) to the mental ones, these side-effects of spending extended periods in space have been studied before. A new study takes the spotlight and shines it brightly on the impact on mental health.

The conclusion is not exactly a cheering one.

With humanity getting ready to send the first manned mission to Mars and, sometime in the near future (hopefully), to colonize the Red Planet, its about time the human costs of space exploration were considered. The first colonizers will be up for the biggest challenge ever, in the most literal sense. If the journey to Mars or landing on the planet doesnt kill them, if they survive the waves of radiation and the hostile environment, they still have a huge hurdle ahead: themselves.

Lack of gravity, lack of privacy, lack of a regular day-cycle, the inescapable routine of everyday life, living in a confined but crowded space, the cold, and the hostile environment. All these will play a role in ultimately altering the mental health of the astronauts, with potentially disastrous consequences for one or more members of the team.

In order to predict the kind of psychological toll space exploration will have on astronauts, a team of researchers conducted a 9-month study on personnel at research centers in Antarctica: two of them, to be more precise, one situated inland and a coastal one. Though theyre still on Earth, these researchers experience similar conditions as astronauts, minus the lack of gravity.

The conclusion was that longer missions inevitably lead to a decline in positive emotions. Not only that, but participants in the study expressed less interest in self-regulating these negative emotions as time went by and manifested physical ailments. Put simply, without a protocol in place for these situations, they can only go from bad to worse.

The study was led by psychologist Candice Alfano, director of the University of Houstons Sleep and Anxiety Center, and her team, who developed a self-reporting diagnostic called Mental Health Checklist (MHCL). It allowed to track participants mental well-being, monitor their level of stress hormones, and provide a presumably accurate description of what will happen on space missions.

During the study, participants expressed decreased levels of feel-good emotions, such as awe, satisfaction, and inspiration, essential for surviving in high-stress scenarios. At points, they showed clear symptoms of depression and anxiety, heightened by and directly related to increasing complaints about their physical health.

Perhaps even worse, even as they approached the date for the return home, they failed to show any improvementor what is known as the third-quarter effect. At the same time, the longer the mission, the fewer the attempts to regulate negative emotions and enforce positive ones.

That sounds very bleak for todays researchers at Antarctica and tomorrows astronauts on Mars. The upside is that this can and should be countered with effective measures that will mitigate some of these potentially devastating effects.

Interventions and counter measures aimed at enhancing positive emotions may, therefore, be critical in reducing psychological risk in extreme settings, Alfano writes in the study.

Sure, on the face of it, were all tough it out, you can do it, and theres still plenty of stigma surrounding mental health in many aspects of our life. But with space exploration, if not with anything else, thats not the kind of risk you want to take.

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Sound the Alarm: Extended Space Missions Will Impact Astronauts' Mental Health - autoevolution

One of the closest spheres of cooperation between Russia and the U.S. has been the International Space Station project. In November 2000, two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut arrived there in a Russian-built spacecraft.

Now, a report by the Guardian indicates that Russia has plans to leave the ISS project and build their own space station. The head of its Roscosmos space agency has said their goal is for an orbital launch by 2030, ending more than 20 years of close cooperation with the U.S. aboard the aging ISS. This is if President Vladimir Putin approves the plan.

If in 2030, in accordance with our plans, we can put it into orbit, it will be a colossal breakthrough, said Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin. The will is there to take a new step in world manned space exploration.

Despite strained relations between Russia and the U.S. over human rights, cyberattacks and other issues, the ISS reportedly has been one of the closest spheres of cooperation between the two countries. Since 1998, Russian cosmonauts have collaborated with peers from the U.S. and 16 other countries for the ISS.

Yuri Borisov, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister, told Russian TV that Moscow would give notice to its partners that it would leave the ISS project from 2025 last weekend.

Since the Russian stations orbit path would expose it to a higher level of radiation, Rogozin said it most likely would not be permanently crewed, unlike the ISS. However in addition to visits by cosmonauts, it would use robots and artificial intelligence.

Rogozin said visits by foreign crews was something Russia was ready to consider, but the station must be national If you want to do well, do it yourself.

An unnamed source was quoted by Interfax saying, Russia planned to spend up to $6bn to get the project launched.

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Russia plans to leave the ISS project and build its own space station - PennLive

By CAMERON DELEAN

Staff Writer

With the recent advancements in space exploration, the question of whether or not we should be furthering our efforts to get to space has created some controversy. Some argue that our focus should be on remedying social and environmental issues on Earth before looking to expand our outreach, while others encourage the relentless pursuit of space exploration and colonization. However, it has become increasingly clear that we are better off first resolving our own planetary issues before we are ready to look elsewhere.

Federal funding for NASA has proven to be a significant expense. Some argue this is unnecessary, while others claim it is essential to developing our understanding of the universe.

The National Space Society, or NSS, makes strong points in favor of continuing NASAs efforts. Jeffrey G. Liss, from the NSS Board of Directors argues that going to space is a must and lists the benefits to pursuing space exploration and colonization in his article, WHY WE DO AND MUST GO INTO SPACE. Liss states that the space program pays for itself, that it opens up the opportunity to discover new resources and that colonizing other planets will help evolve society as a whole.

Liss also argues that the whole point of exploring other planets should be to colonize it, stating the ultimate purpose of going into space is to live and work there just as the ultimate purpose of exploring the New World was colonization and not merely to sit back on Earth and cogitate about what automated spacecraft report back.

The commentary given by Liss is problematic in its nature. The concept of colonization is outdated, and rather space exploration should be seen as an advancement for the entirety of the human race. Instead, it is viewed as a race to conquer and then profit off of new land, when we have yet to solve our own environmental and social dilemmas.

There are far too many issues here on Earth for us to fathom colonizing another planet. There is no way to develop a successful working society from scratch when there are already significant problems we have yet to solve on Earth. Fraser Cain, from Universe Today, discussed in an article, 7 Replies to Shouldnt We Fix the Earth First?, his reasons for hesitating on space exploration.

How about the whole world stops smoking, and we spend $20 billion on colonizing Mars and the other $730 billion on renewable fuels and cleaning up our negative impact on the environment, reducing poverty and giving people access to clean water? said Cain. This is a common argument that many have against continually funding NASA and entertaining the idea of colonizing other planets.

Everyone can recognize the importance of space exploration and can be excited by the idea of advancing technology for that purpose. However, many are also concerned about the state of our planet, and can recognize that our efforts should be directed at remedying the issues we are currently facing. Space exploration should be pursued, just not as aggressively as we should pursue environmental and social issues. It is essential that we learn how to care for our own planet and its inhabitants before we can even consider building societies on other places. If we are incapable of helping ourselves, how are we supposed to expand to an entirely different planet?

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Focus on fixing Earth before colonizing new planets - The Blue & Gray Press

Sypris Solutions (NASDAQ:SYPR) stock is rocketing higher on Friday following news of a space exploration deal with the U.S. Government.

This deal comes from a prime contractor of the U.S. Department of Defense. This will have Sypris Solutions manufacturing and testing of electronic assemblies that will be used in a government spacecraft program.

According to a news release, this spacecraft will be used for deep space exploration. The craft will be able to carry a crew and will also have to be able to reenter the Earths atmosphere after missions in space are complete.

So how far out is this spacecraft expected to travel? As far as Mars if things go well. The goal is to use it for missions to nearby asteroids, the Moon, and then eventually trips to Mars moons and the planet itself.

Jim Long, Vice President & General Manager of Sypris Electronics, said this about the news sending SYPR stock higher today.

Sypris has been manufacturing space electronic hardware for many years for top-tier instrumentation, satellite and spacecraft providers. The opportunity to continue and expand our participation on this program is a privilege for Sypris Electronics. Our customer is a leader in the space industry and we look forward to working closely with them to ensure that this mission-critical program is a success.

Sypris Solutions says that it expects to begin production of the parts for the spacecraft this year. It also doesnt disclose any of the terms of the deal, including financials.

SYPR stock was up 58.4% as of Friday morning and is up 204.8% since the start of the year.

Sypris Solutions isnt the only company seeing its stock rise higher today.

Several others are also seeing gains worth talking about. That includes Ocugen(NASDAQ:OCGN), C3.ai(NYSE:AI), and ION Geophysical Corporation (NYSE:IO). Investors can get up to speed on these stocks by checking out the following content from InvestorPlace.com.

On the date of publication, William White did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

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SYPR Stock: The Big Government Deal That Has Space Stock Sypris Rocketing Higher - Investorplace.com