Daily Archives: October 5, 2021

As it turns out, even with these virtual tools, some old manual habits are hard to break and apparently spacefaring specialists make mistakes just like the rest of us.

Astronaut Scott Kelly wearing a HoloLens headset on the International Space Station.

Image: NASA

Across industries, augmented and virtual reality are adding a 21st-century twist on standard operations and redefining business as usual. This ranges from mixed reality manufacturing to a more literal take on modern medicine, but AR and VR are also being implemented well beyond our Earthly confines, as NASA and JPL tap these capabilities to reimagine space exploration and mission procedures. Sometimes with these tools, as the saying goes, seeing is believing, as engineers and project scientists take a dive into the digital ether to bring tomorrow's spacecraft to life in 3D. But, as it turns out, some old manual habits are hard to break and apparently spacefaring specialists make mistakes just like the rest of us.

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In a recent post, NASA detailed a number of ways the agency taps AR and VR capabilities aboard the space station, ranging from remotely controlling robots to AR maintenance procedures. At the same time, JPL is using mixed reality to create an immersive Martian experience, allowing scientists to take a virtual stroll on our cosmic neighbor.

In one particular project, dubbed Sidekick, astronaut Scott Kelly used a Microsoft HoloLens headset to conduct ISS training and future mission prep. During these tests, a member of mission control on Earth could stream Kelly's field of view via the headset and also draw visuals the astronaut could visualize in 3D on the HoloLens display, explained Benjamin Nuernberger, an AR specialist at JPL.

"So instead of just talking about something spatially, just verbally, now you can give some more spatial 3D instructions drawing into his field of view," he said.

Situationally, Nuernberger discussed the benefits of these VR and AR capabilities alongside NASA's detailed step-by-step iPad instructions the astronauts have at their disposal. While he gave the agency its props, stating NASA does a "great job" of providing detailed procedures, in some instances, such as "unforeseen repairs" or if the instructions are particularly complicated, "it's hard to write up these procedures."

"This kind of technology can help, especially in those situations and unforeseen circumstances, because you could see their perspective, and you can draw on the screen, and those screen drawings can then be displayed in 3D for the astronaut," he said.

A NASA concept image related to the Sidekick project.

Image: NASA

These astronauts may be conducting mission operations on an orbiting space laboratory hundreds of miles overhead, but the conundrum associated with implementing a plan or following a set of instructions isn't necessarily so different from a familiar mundane experience here on Earth.

"Just imagine building IKEA furniture at home. You read the instructions, and you try to build it. Many times we mess up on a certain step," Nuernberger said. "Astronauts, they're extremely smart, and they know how to transfer the instructions from the paper or the iPad into the spatial realm, but still everyone's human in the end."

Scandinavian furniture snafus aside, he said these AR and VR capabilities can help save time, reduce risk and decrease the "cognitive load" on astronauts.

Over time, this project transformed into the ProtoSpace project Nuernberger currently works on, an undertaking that transforms spacecraft designs into 3D interactive visuals using uploaded CAD files.

"Basically, we want to visualize the spacecraft before it's built, while it's being built [and] maybe even after it's built," he said.

To understand the real value-add of these spatial visualizations, it's helpful to take a look at the way scientists and engineers would approach design and assembly before the days of AR and VR headsets. Prior to ProtoSpace, Nuernberger said this planning phase could involve building mockups with costs pushing "tens of thousands of dollars," lots of cabling to support the craft and several day's time putting it all together.

"Now, you can virtually see that almost instantaneously," he said. "You have a CAD model. You upload it with those cables, and then you put on the headset and you're ready to go."

During the design process, Nuernberger said members of the team would "go back and forth over email or show PowerPoints to each other for a long time," adding that he's heard anecdotes where these scientists will put on one of the AR/VR headsets and "almost immediately" come up with the answer to a design or assembly question.

A screenshot of an OpsLab JPL video highlighting these AR and VR uses.

Image: YouTube/OpsLab JPL

SEE:Juggling remote work with kids' education is a mammoth task. Here's how employers can help (free PDF)(TechRepublic)

A lot of these AR and VR-enabled capabilities and new efficiencies comes back to one critical point: NASA builds very specific spacecraft for a very specific environment and purpose. This means the team is in-essence reinventing the roving wheel with each new mission; essentially creating an exploration recipe from scratch with each go-around.

"We're not like a car manufacturer where we're doing the same thing over and over and over again," he said. "We're building one rover, maybe two [...] and if we get something wrong, the risk is very high, especially, in the assembly phase because there's eventually a launch window."

Interestingly, there are also AR and VR workplace safety benefits at play. While NASA may routinely tackle extraterrestrial feats and maneuvers on distant planetary bodies, the agency must still abide by OSHA standards here on terra firma.

In one instance, Nuernberger said the NASA team was planning spacecraft and support equipment configurations when a Microsoft HoloLens revealed a critical flaw in their approach.

"They realized that if [they arranged the craft] in this configuration, someone's going to have to be working under a suspended load, which is a very risky and dangerous thing, which is not allowed under OSHA standards," Nuernberger said.

A screenshot of an OpsLab JPL video highlighting these AR and VR uses.

Image: YouTube/OpsLab JPL

When it comes to the advantages of these tools, Nuernberger said the engineers have "seen that it's not just a toy." As the headset slides on and the visual capabilities take hold, there's often this moment of realization that these AR and VR tools have real functionality, he explained.

"Typically it's when someone puts on the headset for the first time and they look at these massive spacecraft, not just like a little augmented reality experience on your tabletop, but they look at this full-scale spacecraft and they're like, 'Oh my goodness, how big is this?!'"

Self-admittedly, this experience even surprises Nuernberger sometimes, as he slides on the headset and sees the Mars Rover in a living room or conference room and realizes just how large the craft is in a stereoscopic augmented reality as opposed to a pixelated vehicle framed on a computer screen.

Watching the NASA and JPL videos highlighting this technique can be a somewhat surreal experience: A team of JPL employees huddled around a seemingly massive yet-invisible object, each donning virtual reality headsets, manipulating components within a multi-million dollar craft that currently exists as mere digital ether in the middle of it all.

Situationally, sometimes the virtual and the physical worlds blend for the members of the team in this mixed reality mashup and old manual habits can be hard to break.

"We've had people come in with physical tools and put the physical tool on the virtual model, which is kind of cool," Nuernberger said.

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Seeing is believing: AR and VR bring the future of space exploration to life in 3D - TechRepublic

Large government organizations require lots of people to run them. NASA is no exception. Americas space agency has long been under pressure to organizationally support its ongoing Artemis program to return to the moon. Now, it has taken a step in that direction by announcing that its Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate will split into two new ones: the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate and the Space Operations Missions Directorate.

The announcement came on September 21st from Bill Nelson, NASAs administration, who also announced a press conference to discuss the changes further. In that press conference, NASAs leadership team outlined some of the reasons for the change.

A big one was a strong recommendation from President Joe Biden. That suggestion stemmed from politicians frustrations in dealing with the agencys budgetary processes. With the same directorate handling both the Artemis program and ongoing work in the ISS, it was difficult for the people who control the purse strings to understand what that money was going towards.

Expanding a bureaucracy isnt always the most efficient way to do something, however. That will be no exception with this transition. Pam Melroy, NASAs deputy administrator, pointed out that Were actually not adding a whole new layer of people, but that the challenges that we have in coordinating across organizations is exactly the same as it is today.

Those challenges include managing NASAs increasingly complex human spaceflight programs. With two separate directorates headed by two competent leaders, those programs will garner more specific attention. The leaders they picked will have a significant impact how the success or failure of those programs.

NASA did select two very qualified individuals for those roles Kathy Lueders was the current head of the predecessor directorate, where she was promoted to June of 2020. She previously had a leading role in the Commercial Crew Program, though she began her career in 1992 as a depot manager at the White Sands Test Facility after earning her B.S. in Industrial Engineering. Shell now lead the Space Operations Mission Directorate, taking over the ISS and other ongoing human spaceflight operations.

To lead the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA brought back Jim Free, a former employee who had retired in 2017 as the technical deputy associate administrator for the directorate that is being separated. After a stint in private industry, including as an Executive Vice President at Peerless Aerospace, Jim came back to the agency to help develop the Artemis program. His career started back in 1990 as a propulsion engineer, and he has worked at a variety of NASA facilities in his almost 30-year career at the agency.

Critics point out that the added bureaucracy will now require these two leaders to communicate effectively to maintain the same leadership present under Ms. Lueders leadership previously. According to the agency, no changes will impact the various NASA centers located around the country, and the personnel switching will be primarily focused on the headquarters in Washington. With luck, this organizational shake-up will be a way to prioritize goals correctly and allow Congress and the American public to see more directly what their space exploration money is being spent on.

Learn More:NASA NASA Leadership Positions Agency for FutureSpaceNews.com NASA splits human spaceflight directorate into two organizationsSpacePolicyOnline.com NASA SPLITS HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT DIRECTORATE INTO TWO

Lead Image:Artemis program graphicCredit NASA

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NASAs Human Space Exploration Division is Being Split in Two - Universe Today

To highlightthis and other issues surrounding the pushforgender equality,Women in Space, has been chosen asthe theme for this yearsWorld Space Week, whichbegan on Monday.

The goal is to bring more awareness to the issue of gender diversity and identify the obstacles that women are facing when entering space-related careers and contribute to discussions onending disparities.

The UN also wants to show how women from different backgrounds and regions,facedifferent issuesand challengeswithin the industry.

Gender inequality is a long-standing and widespread issue in education and careers inScience, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics(STEM)fields,bothindeveloped and developing countries.

Recent research shows that women are still visibly underrepresented as researchers in STEM fields in all regions,averaging just28.8 percent, globally.

Overall, the number of women in the aerospace industry have fluctuated at around 20 percent for at least 30 years.Only 11 percentof astronautsso far,have been women.

To address some of those issues, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs(UNOOSA)launchedSpace4Women,to promote women's empowerment.

For Simonetta DiPippo, UNOOSAs Director, equality is the pre-condition for a better future.

Space for women means strengthened awareness, capacity, and skills, empowering young women and girls globally and promoting gender equality, shesays.

Over 560 people have traveled to space, butless than70of themare women.Ofthe 225 spacewalks that have been taken, only 15 were by women.

Women CEOsalsorepresent 19% of the leaders in aerospace anddefence, even though space tends to offer high earning jobs in afast growingsector, providing women with more financial freedomand empowerment.

In the future,90% ofalljobs will require STEM related skills and women mustpossessskills and education to be competitive in the future employment market,says UNOOSA.

According to the UN, to succeed in addressing the17Sustainable Development Goals,the worldmust ensure that the benefits of space reach women and girls and that women and girls play an active and equal role in space science, technology, innovation, and exploration.

On 4 October 1957, the launch of the first human-made Earth satellite, Sputnik 1,pavedthe way for space exploration.

From the very beginning of the Space Age, theUN hasrecognized that outer spacerepresented a new frontier for all humanity.

In 1958, the General Assembly adopted itsfirst resolution related to outer space, resolution 1348 (XIII) entitled "Question of the Peaceful Use of Outer Space".

Almost adecade later, on 10 October 1967, theTreaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,entered into force.

Space science and technology and their applications are increasingly being used to support a wide range of UNactivities, with atleast 25 entities,and the World Bank Group,routinelymaking use oftechnological breakthroughsbeing developed.

NASA

NASA astronauts Christina Koch (left) and Jessica Meir work on their spacesuits ahead of a spacewalk they are conducting.

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Only around 1 in 5 space industry workers are women - UN News

Georgia TechsColleges of SciencesandEngineeringhave long collaborated to launch successful joint space science research projects with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Researchers across both Colleges and theGeorgia Tech Research Institute(GTRI) are now hard at work on several ambitious projects related to NASAs planned return to Earths moon and beyond.

Lunar Flashlight to Search for Ice on the Moon

Thomas Orlandosays NASA is always looking for multidisciplinary research programs at the higher education level. He uses a recent win of a key NASA partnership, dubbed theLunar Flashlight Mission, as an example of whats been a very successful approach for the Institute.

Orlando is a professor in theSchool of Chemistry and Biochemistry, principal investigator for NASAREVEALS(Radiation Effects on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces), and former co-founder and director of Georgia TechsCenter for Space Technology and Research(C-STAR.)

REVEALS is researching ways to prepare NASA for the next generation of its crewed space missions, and is, itself, part of a larger NASAprogram,SSERVI (Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute).

The project includes designing spacesuits with radiation detection materials sewn into the suits and using the Moons natural resources (buried ice for water, minerals at or near the surface) to support astronaut habitats. That ice could also provide drinking water for astronauts and possibly help fuel engines built on site.

REVEALS is focusing on the water on the Moon issue. This involves understanding how it is made or delivered, how it is transported, and where it is. The work also involves developing technologies to extract it, a project lead byPeter Loutzenhiser(George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering). We obviously need to know how much is there and whether we can get it and utilize it. This is where Lunar Flashlight comes in, Orlando says.

The Lunar Flashlight project also focuses on deep collaboration and coordination across several agencies and teams.This past summer, theNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) in Southern California shipped all spacecraft parts to Tech's Atlanta campus to begin assembly and testing. GTRI is now providing the clean room for assembly, and a team of researchers, led byJud Ready, is managing all the integration and testing of Lunar Flashlight before itisshipped to theMarshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for fueling, then on toKennedy Space Centerin Cape Canaveral, Florida, for launch in 2022.

Our new Center for Space Hardware Assembly, Fabrication and Testing will provide the cleanroom space to assemble Lunar Flashlight and put it through a rigorous series of tests, says Ready, who is principal investigator of the Lunar Flashlight project. Ready also serves as deputy director of Innovation Initiatives for theGeorgia Tech Institute for Materials(IMat), is an adjunct professor in theSchool of Materials Science and Engineering, and is a principal research engineer at GTRI.

Theres no instruction manual right now its our role to collaborate with the scientists and engineers at JPL and the other partners to write the test and integration procedures, do them, and at the same time to conclusively verify our work, Ready says.

Tiny CubeSats Take to the Sky

The Lunar Flashlight is aCubeSat a mini-satellite thats basically what its name implies: a 6U CubeSat (30 x 20 x 10cm), about the size of a desktop tower computer. CubeSatscan weigh anywhere from 3 to 20 pounds, and can be deployed much easier and at a lower cost than traditional satellites.

Since their introduction in 1999, CubeSats have becomepopularfor science and commercial satellite deployment, while allowing Engineering and Sciences students at schools such as Georgia Tech to design and deploy their own satellites.

Thats great in and of itself, for our students to have an opportunity to build a satellite and send it into space,Glenn Lightsey, David Lewis Professor of Space Systems Technology in theDaniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, and current C-STAR director, says. They can apply to a company with a resume that says, Ive already built a satellite and its in space talking to others. Twenty years ago, that just didnt happen.

Lunar Flashlight CubeSat willhave sensitive instrumentation for locating buried ice on the Moon, and Lightseysteam has already built its propulsion system. After launch from Kennedy Space Center, Lunar Flashlight will have its mission control operations run out of Lightseys lab.

Engineering hardware with scientific instrumentation Lightsey says you cant illustrate Georgia Techs strengths as a NASA partner any better thanwith interdisciplinary projects like the Lunar Flashlight.

I think Georgia Tech has a competitive advantage based on how it is really emphasizing interdisciplinary research from the beginning, from idea generation on. There arent many institutions like it in my opinion. Its in Georgia Techs bones.

Lunar Dust-Busting in NASAs BIGIdeas Challenge

The REVEALS program is also looking at ways to wipe out the problem of lunar dust, which can have an inherent electrical charge and can be more damaging to equipment than Earth dust. It can also be a health hazard if it sneaks into an astronauts habitat.

Its an engineering project, but a science problem, Orlando says. Heres an example of where engineering and science got together, and something great came out of it.

NASAsBIG (Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-Changing) Ideas Challenge, a competition for undergraduates and graduate students to brainstorm away problems for the space agency, was dedicated to lunar dust mitigation for the 2021 version. That project is led byJulie Linsey, a professor in theGeorge W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering who is mentored by Orlando and Lightsey, along with REVEALS researchscientistsMicah SchaibleandZach Seibers, a student team of engineering studentsVarun Bose,John Fitton,Zhen Liu,Dicky Silitonga,Kristoffer (Kris) Sjolund,andJeffery Zhang. The crew came up with a hybrid brush, which uses both an electrodynamic system (EDS) and ultraviolet (UV) technology to keep dust from building up on lunar spacesuits.

The team, which called itselfShoot For the Moon, is among sixBIG Ideas Challenge finalists. Shoot For the Moon will give a presentation on the hybrid brush at the BIG Ideas Forum in November.

Two members of the REVEALS team also recently presented their work on human space exploration.Faris Almatouq, a graduate student in theSchool of Physicsworking on novel radiation detectors, andKris Sjolund, a graduate research assistant in mechanical engineering working on the dust brush, both won first prize in the poster contest at the SSERVI/NASA Exploration Science Forum and European Lunar Workshop in July.

These students and co-investigators are all doing great and impactful work, Orlando says. Theres an interesting distribution of students working on BIG Ideas projects. Theyre mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and aerospace engineering students. And there were chemists and other scientists advising them. It was a multidisciplinary student team and a multidisciplinary advisory team.

From our State to our Solar System

Orlando and Lightsey also note that Techs graduates are already finding jobs withBlueOriginandSpaceX, two of the new commercial space businesses with successful crewed maiden flights earlier in the summer. Thats in addition to how Georgia Tech has seeded NASA and JPL, plus Lockheed, Boeing, and other established aerospace companies, with former students.

Almost half of my students are getting a graduate degree in engineeringanda graduate degree in science, Orlando says. They typically get a masters in engineering or materials science and a Ph.D. in chemistry or physics. It markets them much more for SpaceX or NASA. Its this hybrid training that people are looking for, and I cant think of a better place for it than Georgia Tech.

Lightsey and Orlando hope to one day welcome nearby universities, such as Emory University and the University of Georgia, as partners in some of these initiatives. The move would combine resources and expertise from all three institutions to create a first-of-its-kind statewide space science initiative or institute in Georgia.

That kind of collaboration could also help create a new powerhouse for planetary and space science research close to home research institutions and could help create more job opportunities to retain Georgia talent, with young alumni working in a range of aerospace-related industries with freshly minted Georgia-grown degrees in hand.

Theres a lot of interest, Lightsey says. Who doesnt want to work on space exploration? This is something that resonates with everyone in every discipline. I think all the institutions have different areas of expertise they can contribute. I think collectively we can be much more complete than just one institution by itself.

World Space Week 2021: Georgia Tech to Host Space Day Atlanta

The Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech will host Space Day Atlanta on October 9, 2021as an effort to launch local K-12 students interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

The day-long event on campus, organized by NASAs Georgia Space Grant Consortium (GSGC), will allow local schoolchildren to see demonstrations of current aerospace research at Georgia Tech, as well as participate in various hands-on activities such as virtual flights to Mars and rocket building and launching. Learn more.

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Georgia Tech Sciences, Engineering, and Space: For a Longtime Campus Partnership, the Sky's Still The Limit | Research - Research Horizons

A space mission jointly launched by the European and Japanese space agencies has captured its first, up-close look at the planet Mercury.

A pair of linked orbiters known together as BepiColombo snapped several photos on Oct. 1 during a long-awaited flyby around the innermost planet of our Solar System. The images show Mercurys northern hemisphere and the dozens of craters that dot its surface, including one thats been the site of several volcanic explosions, according to a statement from the European Space Agency. Also captured in the shot are the spacecrafts antennas and magnetometer boom.

The ESA and the Japan Space Exploration Agency launched BepiColombo in 2018 to capture images of Mercury with the goal of uncovering more about its origin and evolution. Only two probes have ever traveled to the planet: Mariner 10, which flew by in 1974 and 1975, and MESSENGER, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015.

This weeks flyby marked BepiColombos first of six around Mercury. The space probes passed within 124 miles (199 km) of the planets surface.

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The flyby was flawless from the spacecraft point of view, and its incredible to finally see our target planet, said Elsa Montagnon, the missions spacecraft operations manager, in an ESA press release.

It was very exciting to see BepiColombos first images of Mercury, and to work out what we were seeing, added David Rothery, head of the ESAs Mercury Surface and Composition Working Group. It has made me even more enthusiastic to study the top quality science data that we should get when we are in orbit around Mercury, because this is a planet that we really do not yet fully understand.

The next Mercury flyby is set for June of next year, followed by four more in June 2023, September 2024, December 2024, and January 2025. If everything goes according to plan, BepiColombo will slow down enough to enter Mercurys orbit by the end of 2025. Then, the two orbiters will begin their main scientific mission: mapping the surface of Mercury to study its surface processes, composition, and magnetic field.

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Joint Europe-Japan Space Mission Captures Its First Flyby Photos of Mercury - Gizmodo

Georgia TechsColleges of SciencesandEngineeringhave long collaborated to launch successful joint space science research projects with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Researchers across both Colleges and theGeorgia Tech Research Institute(GTRI) are now hard at work on several ambitious projects related to NASAs planned return to Earths moon and beyond.

Lunar Flashlight to Search for Ice on the Moon

Thomas Orlandosays NASA is always looking for multidisciplinary research programs at the higher education level. He uses a recent win of a key NASA partnership, dubbed theLunar Flashlight Mission, as an example of whats been a very successful approach for the Institute.

Orlando is a professor in theSchool of Chemistry and Biochemistry, principal investigator for NASAREVEALS(Radiation Effects on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces), and former co-founder and director of Georgia TechsCenter for Space Technology and Research(C-STAR.)

REVEALS is researching ways to prepare NASA for the next generation of its crewed space missions, and is, itself, part of a larger NASAprogram,SSERVI (Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute).

The project includes designing spacesuits with radiation detection materials sewn into the suits and using the Moons natural resources (buried ice for water, minerals at or near the surface) to support astronaut habitats. That ice could also provide drinking water for astronauts and possibly help fuel engines built on site.

REVEALS is focusing on the water on the Moon issue. This involves understanding how it is made or delivered, how it is transported, and where it is. The work also involves developing technologies to extract it, a project lead byPeter Loutzenhiser(George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering). We obviously need to know how much is there and whether we can get it and utilize it. This is where Lunar Flashlight comes in, Orlando says.

The Lunar Flashlight project also focuses on deep collaboration and coordination across several agencies and teams.This past summer, theNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) in Southern California shipped all spacecraft parts to Tech's Atlanta campus to begin assembly and testing. GTRI is now providing the clean room for assembly, and a team of researchers, led byJud Ready, is managing all the integration and testing of Lunar Flashlight before itisshipped to theMarshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for fueling, then on toKennedy Space Centerin Cape Canaveral, Florida, for launch in 2022.

Our new Center for Space Hardware Assembly, Fabrication and Testing will provide the cleanroom space to assemble Lunar Flashlight and put it through a rigorous series of tests, says Ready, who is principal investigator of the Lunar Flashlight project. Ready also serves as deputy director of Innovation Initiatives for theGeorgia Tech Institute for Materials(IMat), is an adjunct professor in theSchool of Materials Science and Engineering, and is a principal research engineer at GTRI.

Theres no instruction manual right now its our role to collaborate with the scientists and engineers at JPL and the other partners to write the test and integration procedures, do them, and at the same time to conclusively verify our work, Ready says.

Tiny CubeSats Take to the Sky

The Lunar Flashlight is aCubeSat a mini-satellite thats basically what its name implies: a 6U CubeSat (30 x 20 x 10cm), about the size of a desktop tower computer. CubeSatscan weigh anywhere from 3 to 20 pounds, and can be deployed much easier and at a lower cost than traditional satellites.

Since their introduction in 1999, CubeSats have becomepopularfor science and commercial satellite deployment, while allowing Engineering and Sciences students at schools such as Georgia Tech to design and deploy their own satellites.

Thats great in and of itself, for our students to have an opportunity to build a satellite and send it into space,Glenn Lightsey, David Lewis Professor of Space Systems Technology in theDaniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, and current C-STAR director, says. They can apply to a company with a resume that says, Ive already built a satellite and its in space talking to others. Twenty years ago, that just didnt happen.

Lunar Flashlight CubeSat willhave sensitive instrumentation for locating buried ice on the Moon, and Lightseysteam has already built its propulsion system. After launch from Kennedy Space Center, Lunar Flashlight will have its mission control operations run out of Lightseys lab.

Engineering hardware with scientific instrumentation Lightsey says you cant illustrate Georgia Techs strengths as a NASA partner any better thanwith interdisciplinary projects like the Lunar Flashlight.

I think Georgia Tech has a competitive advantage based on how it is really emphasizing interdisciplinary research from the beginning, from idea generation on. There arent many institutions like it in my opinion. Its in Georgia Techs bones.

Lunar Dust-Busting in NASAs BIGIdeas Challenge

The REVEALS program is also looking at ways to wipe out the problem of lunar dust, which can have an inherent electrical charge and can be more damaging to equipment than Earth dust. It can also be a health hazard if it sneaks into an astronauts habitat.

Its an engineering project, but a science problem, Orlando says. Heres an example of where engineering and science got together, and something great came out of it.

NASAsBIG (Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-Changing) Ideas Challenge, a competition for undergraduates and graduate students to brainstorm away problems for the space agency, was dedicated to lunar dust mitigation for the 2021 version. That project is led byJulie Linsey, a professor in theGeorge W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering who is mentored by Orlando and Lightsey, along with REVEALS researchscientistsMicah SchaibleandZach Seibers, a student team of engineering studentsVarun Bose,John Fitton,Zhen Liu,Dicky Silitonga,Kristoffer (Kris) Sjolund,andJeffery Zhang. The crew came up with a hybrid brush, which uses both an electrodynamic system (EDS) and ultraviolet (UV) technology to keep dust from building up on lunar spacesuits.

The team, which called itselfShoot For the Moon, is among sixBIG Ideas Challenge finalists. Shoot For the Moon will give a presentation on the hybrid brush at the BIG Ideas Forum in November.

Two members of the REVEALS team also recently presented their work on human space exploration.Faris Almatouq, a graduate student in theSchool of Physicsworking on novel radiation detectors, andKris Sjolund, a graduate research assistant in mechanical engineering working on the dust brush, both won first prize in the poster contest at the SSERVI/NASA Exploration Science Forum and European Lunar Workshop in July.

These students and co-investigators are all doing great and impactful work, Orlando says. Theres an interesting distribution of students working on BIG Ideas projects. Theyre mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and aerospace engineering students. And there were chemists and other scientists advising them. It was a multidisciplinary student team and a multidisciplinary advisory team.

From our State to our Solar System

Orlando and Lightsey also note that Techs graduates are already finding jobs withBlueOriginandSpaceX, two of the new commercial space businesses with successful crewed maiden flights earlier in the summer. Thats in addition to how Georgia Tech has seeded NASA and JPL, plus Lockheed, Boeing, and other established aerospace companies, with former students.

Almost half of my students are getting a graduate degree in engineeringanda graduate degree in science, Orlando says. They typically get a masters in engineering or materials science and a Ph.D. in chemistry or physics. It markets them much more for SpaceX or NASA. Its this hybrid training that people are looking for, and I cant think of a better place for it than Georgia Tech.

Lightsey and Orlando hope to one day welcome nearby universities, such as Emory University and the University of Georgia, as partners in some of these initiatives. The move would combine resources and expertise from all three institutions to create a first-of-its-kind statewide space science initiative or institute in Georgia.

That kind of collaboration could also help create a new powerhouse for planetary and space science research close to home research institutions and could help create more job opportunities to retain Georgia talent, with young alumni working in a range of aerospace-related industries with freshly minted Georgia-grown degrees in hand.

Theres a lot of interest, Lightsey says. Who doesnt want to work on space exploration? This is something that resonates with everyone in every discipline. I think all the institutions have different areas of expertise they can contribute. I think collectively we can be much more complete than just one institution by itself.

World Space Week 2021: Georgia Tech to Host Space Day Atlanta

The Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech will host Space Day Atlanta on October 9, 2021as an effort to launch local K-12 students interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

The day-long event on campus, organized by NASAs Georgia Space Grant Consortium (GSGC), will allow local schoolchildren to see demonstrations of current aerospace research at Georgia Tech, as well as participate in various hands-on activities such as virtual flights to Mars and rocket building and launching. Learn more.

View original post here:

Georgia Tech Sciences, Engineering, and Space: For a Longtime Campus Partnership, the Sky's Still The Limit | College of Sciences | Georgia Institute...

With Blue Origin's second crewed flight less than two weeks away, the company is facing scathing allegations about its culture and the safety of its suborbital launch system, New Shepard.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is now considering concerns related to vehicle safety that were raised in a detailed essay published by the Lioness on Thursday (Sept. 30). In the essay, 21 past and current Blue Origin employees, all but one of them remaining anonymous, raise a string of concerns about the company's culture, including allegations of sexism, corporate suppression of dissent, disdain for sustainability and a habit of prioritizing schedules above safety when it comes to New Shepard.

"The FAA takes every safety allegation seriously, and the agency is reviewing the information," an agency spokesperson told Space.com in an email.

In photos: Blue Origin's 1st New Shepard passenger launch with Jeff Bezos

The allegations come about two months after Blue Origin's founder, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, rode his company's suborbital launch system on an exultant 10-minute long flight, the vehicle's first ever crewed mission and just days after the company announced that its next crewed mission would launch on Oct. 12.

At the time, the company also identified two of the four passengers on the Oct. 12 flight: Chris Boshuizen, a co-founder of Earth-observation company Planet, and Glen de Vries, who is vice chair for life sciences and healthcare at a French software company. De Vries told The New York Times that he was not concerned about safety on the upcoming flight.

"I am confident in Blue Origin's safety program, spacecraft, and track record, and certainly wouldn't be flying with them if I wasn't," he told The New York Times. "I've been to the launch site, met people at every level of the company, and everything I've seen was indicative of a great team and culture."

In a statement, the company rejected the allegations aired in the Lioness piece. "Blue Origin has no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind," a company spokesperson told Space.com by email. "We provide numerous avenues for employees, including a 24/7 anonymous hotline, and will promptly investigate any new claims of misconduct. We stand by our safety record and believe that New Shepard is the safest space vehicle ever designed or built."

New Shepard, a reusable rocket-capsule combo, has flown 17 times without incident.

In an email to employees obtained by CNBC, CEO Bob Smith wrote to "reassure" workers. "First, the New Shepard team went through a methodical and pain-staking process to certify our vehicle for First Human Flight. Anyone that claims otherwise is uninformed and simply incorrect," he wrote, according to CNBC. "It should also be emphatically stated that we have no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind."

The essay, which reads as a scathing indictment of the company's culture, marks the second publication by Lioness, a company that bills itself as a "storytelling platform" and also works to arrange media coverage of its features. Only one of the 21 signatories is named publicly: Alexandra Abrams, who worked in Blue Origin's communications department from June 2017 to November 2019, according to her LinkedIn profile.

In the statement, the Blue Origin spokesperson wrote, "Ms. Abrams was dismissed for cause two years ago after repeated warnings for issues involving federal export control regulations"; Abrams has said that she was told leadership no longer trusted her.

In an interview with CBS Mornings, Abrams offered a little more detail about the group behind the essay, noting that 13 of the 21 people are or were "engineers or technical" personnel. "They span all the major programs of the company, and they also span different levels," Abrams said. Later in the interview, she noted that the group "includ[es] very senior people."

Blue Origin has been lucky that nothing has happened so far.

The essay touches on a range of issues, but the authors highlighted safety as their motivation, calling it "for many of us ... the driving force for coming forward with this essay." The essay paints a portrait of a corporate culture that devalues safety concerns and risk management.

"Some of us felt that with the resources and staff available, leaderships race to launch at such a breakneck speed was seriously compromising flight safety," the authors wrote, comparing the situation to the environment at NASA discovered after the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger 73 seconds after launch.

"Concerns related to flying New Shepard were consistently shut down, and women were demeaned for raising them," the authors wrote. "In the opinion of an engineer who has signed on to this essay, 'Blue Origin has been lucky that nothing has happened so far.' Many of this essay's authors say they would not fly on a Blue Origin vehicle."

The letter is sparse on specific allegations, but three items stand out as relatively detailed concerns.

One is a reference to a backlog of more than 1,000 unaddressed "problem reports" in 2018 regarding "the engines that power Blue Origin's rockets." The engine in question is likely the company's BE-3, which uses a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and made its first flight in 2015, according to the company's website. According to the website, the company is still testing a new model of BE-3 for use on its planned orbital vehicle, New Glenn. (Other engines Blue Origin is building include the much-delayed BE-4, which is in testing and slated for use on New Glenn and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan, and the BE-7, which is also still in development.)

In addition to the engine problem reports, the essay writers also pointed to insufficient staffing on an unspecified aspect of New Shepard. "In 2019, the team assigned to operate and maintain one of New Shepard's subsystems included only a few engineers working long hours," they wrote. "Their responsibilities, in some of our opinions, went far beyond what would be manageable for a team double the size, ranging from investigating the root cause of failures to conducting regular preventative maintenance on the rocket's systems."

And the essay writers also noted steps taken out of order in New Shepard's development. "Internally, many of us did not see leadership invest in prioritizing sound systems engineering practices," they wrote. "Systems engineering products were created for New Shepard after it was built and flying, rather than in the design phase; this impacted verification efforts."

Abrams told CBS Mornings that, while she was employed at Blue Origin, she approached management about safety concerns reported by technical staff and was rebuffed. "Oftentimes, when I would try to reconcile what I was hearing from the engineers who were close to the vehicle versus leadership about risk and safety, I would often go to leadership and say, 'OK, how am I supposed to think about this?'" Abrams said. "Often the response would be, 'Oh, well, that person in particular doesn't have a high enough risk tolerance.'"

According to the interview, the co-authors sent the essay to the FAA before publication in order to flag the safety concerns.

The essay and Abrams' interview with CBS both connect the downplaying of risks with the company's broader culture. "You cannot create a culture of safety and a culture of fear at the same time. They are incompatible," Abrams said.

In the opinion of Abrams and her co-authors, the company's blas safety philosophy developed primarily in response to the "billionaire space race" idea that developed between three rival private space companies: Bezos' Blue Origin, Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

Abrams told CBS Mornings that the company's atmosphere was pleasant when she first joined, but it quickly soured. "It was great that Blue Origin was smooth and steady and slow until Jeff [Bezos] started becoming impatient and Elon [Musk] and Branson were getting ahead," Abrams said. "Then we started to feel this increasing pressure and impatience that would definitely filter down from leadership."

When asked, Abrams agreed that, at the time, competition seemed to take precedence over safety in guiding Blue Origin's decisions.

The essay also ties safety lapses to competition and Bezos' personal priorities. "At Blue Origin, a common question during high-level meetings was, 'When will Elon or Branson fly?,'" the authors wrote. "Competing with other billionaires and 'making progress for Jeff' seemed to take precedence over safety concerns that would have slowed down the schedule."

(Bezos' rivalry with Musk may be especially intense, as the two billionaires have traded barbs repeatedly over the years.)

But the group notes other factors that they see as contributing to the deprioritization of safety as well.

They wrote of a budget-conscious culture and an emphasis on slim spending even when projects were made more ambitious. "Employees are often told to 'be careful with Jeff's money,' to 'not ask for more,' and to 'be grateful,'" they wrote. And both the essay and Abrams' remarks point to increasingly aggressive contract terms for employees, including pressuring existing employees to sign non-disclosure agreements.

The group also described diversity shortcomings and "a particular brand of sexism," including at high levels of the company despite its idealistic goals. "The workforce dedicated to establishing this future 'for all' is mostly male and overwhelmingly white," they wrote. "One-hundred percent of the senior technical and program leaders are men." They describe sexist remarks from two unnamed senior figures and leadership's "clear bias against women," manifested in situations like the treatment of departing employees.

The essay also accuses the company of dismissing environmental concerns and Bezos of acting counter to his public donations to environmental causes.

In general, the essay targets company leadership as a whole and the culture that leadership has created, with no specific allegations against Bezos, although Abrams mentioned him specifically in the CBS Mornings interview.

"I think I would say to Jeff that I really wish he was the person we all thought he was and that Blue Origin was the company we all thought it was going to be," she said.

The essay marks another publicity blow for Blue Origin, which appears to be deep into bickering with its rival billionaire-founded space companies.

The company is sparring with SpaceX over a hotly desired contract for NASA's Human Landing System (HLS), the component designed to ferry astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon's surface, perhaps as early as 2024.

NASA officials had previously said that they would like to select more than one concept for HLS funding. But in April 2021, after receiving much less funding for the project from Congress than the agency had requested, NASA decided to fund development work only from SpaceX, which had submitted a cheaper bid than the Blue Origin-led "National Team" or the third entrant in the competition, Dynetics. Blue Origin responded by filing a protest with the agency's internal Office of Inspector General (as Dynetics did as well). When that tactic failed, Blue Origin decided to sue NASA.

As a result, the agency and SpaceX cannot work on HLS until November. All told, the objections will mean minimal work completed even six months after the contract's announcement. Meanwhile, in July, Bezos penned an open letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson offering to cover some costs of a Blue Origin HLS program in-house and raising a host of complaints about the process behind the contract.

The company even raised eyebrows around its greatest success to date, Bezos' own flight. After Branson announced that he would fly on Virgin Galactic's suborbital tourism system just over a week before Bezos' announced flight date, Blue Origin dug into a bitter publicity push comparing the two flight systems.

Such efforts perhaps didn't come as much of a surprise to the Lioness essay authors.

"Billionaires may like to present themselves as altruistic, using their resources for the benefit of humanity; in our opinion, however, much of that image is an illusion created by public relations teams, underpinned by ego," the authors wrote.

The essay authors note that they're happy to have billionaires fund space exploration. But they argue that it's important to consider the wider implications that an environment like the one they claim Bezos has fostered has for the space community.

"In our experience, Blue Origins culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs," the essay reads. "That's not the world we should be creating here on Earth, and certainly not as our springboard to a better one."

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

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Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin faces scathing criticism of safety and culture - Space.com

Artist depiction of a lunar lander utilizes the FAST landing pad deposition technology. Credit: Masten Space Systems

Space exploration requires all kinds of interesting solutions to complex problems. There is a branch of NASA designed to support the innovators trying to solve those problems the Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). They occasionally hand out grant funding to worthy projects trying to tackle some of these challenges. The results from one of those grants are now in, and they are intriguing. A team from Masten Space Systems, supported by Honeybee Robotics, Texas A&M, and the University of Central Florida, came up with a way a lunar lander could deposit its own landing pad on the way down.

Lunar dust poses a significant problem to any powered landers on the surface. The retrograde rockets needed to land on the moons surface softly will also kick dust and rock up into the air, potentially damaging the lander itself or any surrounding human infrastructure. A landing pad would lessen the impact of this dust and provide a more stable place for the landing itself.

Graphic showing the difference between landing with or without the deposition system. Credit: Masten Space Systems

But constructing such a landing pad the traditional way would be prohibitively expensive. Current estimates put the cost of building a lunar landing pad using traditional materials at approximately $120 million. Any such mission also suffers from a chicken and egg problem. How to get the materials to build the landing pad land in place if there is no landing pad, to begin with?

The technology Masten has developed is an ingenious solution to both of those problems. Depositing a landing pad while descending would allow spacefarers to have a landing pad in place before a spacecraft ever touches down there. It would also cost much less to install as all that is needed is a relatively simple additive to the rocket exhaust already being blasted into the surface.

Graphic showing the whole system process of the FAST particle injector. Credit: Masten Space Systems

Mastens general idea is easy enough to understand. Adding solid pellets into the rocket exhaust would allow that material to partially liquefy and deposit onto the exhausts blast zone, potentially hardening it to a point where dust is no longer a factor as it is encapsulated in a hard external shell. Masten believed it could find the right material to add to rocket exhaust to do exactly that.

Success or failure would come down to the physical properties of the additive pellets. Any additive with too much heat tolerance wouldnt melt appropriately in the rocket exhaust, essentially bombarding the surface with tiny bullets. On the other hand, any additive with too little heat tolerance could be completely melted by the rocket exhaust and vaporized into a useless cloud.

Example of how much dust can be kicked up even on Earth as one of Mastens rockets is test fired. Credit: Masten Space Systems

To find the perfect balance, Masten developed a two-tiered system, with relatively large (.5mm) alumina particles used to create a base layer of 1mm of melted lunar surface combined with alumina. Then, as the lander got closer to the base layer, the additive would switch to a .024mm alumina particle, which would deposit at 650 m/s onto the base layer and create a 6m diameter landing pad that would cool in 2.5 seconds.

That all sounds like a pretty impressive idea, but it is still early days. Like many federal grants, the NIAC grant focused on developing this depositable landing pad idea takes a phased approach. Most of the Phase I, which has just been completed, focused on proving the idea is feasible, which Masten believes it is.

Example of the effects of an alumina plate, similar to what would be deposited on the moons surface in a fully scaled up system. An infrared image of the rocket exhaust can be seen to the right. Credit: Masten Space Systems

Feasible is not the same as functional, but that is precisely what NIAC grants are supposed to support wild ideas that might just fundamentally change some aspect of space exploration. If Masten is correct and the approach is possible and can be scaled up, landing pads might be seen cropping up all over the lunar surface. And eventually all over Mars as well.

Read more here:

Lunar Landers Could Blast Deposit Instant Landing Pads as They Arrive at the Moon - SciTechDaily

NUR-SULTAN Kazakh President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev congratulated the country with the 30th anniversary of its first space flight.

Toktar Aubakirov received For Merit in Space Exploration medal for outstanding contribution to the development of international cooperation in manned space flight. Photo credit: Twitter.

The countrys first astronaut Toktar Aubakirov flew into space 30 years ago. This event marked the beginning of the space exploration program of Kazakhstan. Today, space exploration serves the interests of our people and our national economy, said the President on his Twitter.

Oct. 2, 1991 has become a historic day both for Kazakhstan and Austria as the two countries sent their first people into space together for the first time.

On that day, Toktar Aubakirov as flight commander, Alexander Volkov and the Austrian research cosmonaut Franz Viehbck launched on board of the Soyuz TM-13 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch was not easy emotionally or technically there was a flight commander and two novice research astronauts for the first time instead of commander, flight engineer and researcher.

In fact it was the Soviet-Austrian crew: Volkov was the 60th cosmonaut in the USSR, Aubakirov was the 72nd, and as it turned out later, the last Soviet astronaut. Photo credit: sputnik.kz

Upon the invitation of Nursultan Nazarbaev, Kazakhstans First President, heads of the former Soviet Union countries as well as Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky arrived at the Baikonur cosmodrome to congratulate Kazakhstan with its space breakthrough.

Toktar Aubakirov, being a test pilot, was the first person to make a nonstop flight crossing the North Pole to take off from the Tbilisi aircraft-carrier on a MiG 29K in the Soviet Union. He is the last astronaut of the USSR and a retired Kazakh Air Force officer.

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Kazakhstan Celebrates 30th Anniversary Since Its First Flight Into Space - Astana Times