Daily Archives: February 1, 2022

As the world of aerospace continues to expand to include private companies that are now able to send people into orbit, space tech can help life on Earth. The advancement of space and medical technology is something orthopedic surgeon, oncologist, chemical engineer, and astronaut, Robert Satcher knows about first hand.

A lot of the imaging technology we use on cancer patients: MRI, CT Scans owe part of that technology to what was developed at NASA, Satcher said during a conversation with PBS NewsHours Nicole Ellis. From modern day aircrafts, to cell phones, and video chatting services like Zoom and Skype that have become surrogates for human connection during a global pandemic, solutions initially sought to make interplanetary travel and communication possible are now integral parts of everyday life, Satcher said.

Watch the interview with Robert Satcher in the live player above.

The aerospace industry has become more commercially accessible in the years since Satchers NASA Mission to space in 2009. Non-astronauts can now visit space on privately owned and operated space ships through companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. Its a good time to be a human being because, you know, these things are starting to open up and everybody is going to be able, or more people at least are going to be able to see what its like to be in space, Satcher said.

Despite companies like SpaceX setting its sights on building human settlements on Mars, our journey towards becoming a multi-planet species is in its infancy. Scientists are still figuring out how to make the 3-year journey survivable. However, one of the more significant developments in commercial space exploration is affordability by creating reusable spacecrafts.

Another crucial part of development over the years has been the diversifying of the aerospace field, while still slow, Satcher said that having people of different trades, genders, ethnicities and backgrounds will be an essential part of making our galaxy more accessible to humans. No particular group has a monopoly on either perspective or capability. So you got to get all of these different perspectives and everything to to really maximize what you get in terms of development and research and technical advancement, he said.

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One former NASA astronauts view on what is next in space exploration - PBS NewsHour

2022 is set to be humanitys busiest year in space. CSA Images via Getty Images

Space travel is all about momentum.

Rockets turn their fuel into momentum that carries people, satellites and science itself forward into space. 2021 was a year full of records for space programs around the world, and that momentum is carrying forward into 2022.

Last year, the commercial space race truly took off. Richard Branson and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos both rode on suborbital launches and brought friends, including actor William Shatner. SpaceX sent eight astronauts and 1 ton of supplies to the International Space Station for NASA. The six tourist spaceflights in 2021 were a record. There were also a record 19 people weightless in space for a short time in December, eight of them private citizens. Finally, Mars was also busier than ever thanks to missions from the U.S., China and United Arab Emirates sending rovers, probes or orbiters to the red planet.

In total, in 2021 there were 134 launches that put humans or satellites into orbit the highest number in the entire history of spaceflight. Nearly 200 orbital launches are scheduled for 2022. If things go well, this will smash last years record.

Im an astronomer who studies supermassive black holes and distant galaxies. I have also written a book about humanitys future in space. Theres a lot to look forward to in 2022. The Moon will get more attention than it has had in decades, as will Jupiter. The largest rocket ever built will make its first flight. And of course, the James Webb Space Telescope will start sending back its first images.

I, for one, cant wait.

Getting a rocket into orbit around Earth is a technical achievement, but its only equivalent to a half a days drive straight up. Fifty years after the last person stood on Earths closest neighbor, 2022 will see a crowded slate of lunar missions.

NASA will finally debut its much delayed Space Launch System. This rocket is taller than the Statue of Liberty and produces more thrust than the mighty Saturn V. The Artemis I mission will head off this spring for a flyby of the Moon. Its a proof of concept for a rocket system that will one day let people live and work off Earth. The immediate goal is to put astronauts back on the Moon by 2025.

NASA is also working to develop the infrastructure for a lunar base, and its partnering with private companies on science missions to the Moon. A company called Astrobotic will carry 11 payloads to a large crater on the near side of the Moon, including two mini-rovers and a package of personal mementos gathered from the general public by a company based in Germany. The Astrobotic lander will also be carrying the cremated remains of science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke as with Shatners flight into space, its an example of science fiction turned into fact. Another company, Intuitive Machines, plans two trips to the Moon in 2022, carrying 10 payloads that include a lunar hopper and an ice mining experiment.

Russia is getting in on the lunar act, too. The Soviet Union accomplished many lunar firsts first spacecraft to hit the surface in 1959, first spacecraft to soft-land in 1966 and the first lunar rover in 1970 but Russia hasnt been back for over 45 years. In 2022, it plans to send the Luna 25 lander to the Moons south pole to drill for ice. Frozen water is an essential requirement for any Moon base.

While NASAs Space Launch System will be a big step up for the agency, Elon Musks new rocket promises to be the king of the skies in 2022.

The SpaceX Starship the most powerful rocket ever launched will get its first orbital launch in 2022. Its fully reusable, has more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V rocket and can carry 100 tons into orbit. The massive rocket is central to Musks aspirations to create a self-sustaining base on the Moon and, eventually, a city on Mars.

Part of what makes Starship so important is how cheap it will make bringing things into space. If successful, the price of each flight will be US$2 million. By contrast, the price for NASA to launch the Space Launch System is likely to be over $2 billion. The reduction in costs by a factor of a thousand will be a game-changer for the economics of space travel.

The Moon and Mars arent the only celestial bodies getting attention next year. After decades of neglect, Jupiter will finally get some love, too.

The European Space Agencys Icy Moons Explorer is scheduled to head off to the gas giant midyear. Once there, it will spend three years studying three of Jupiters moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. These moons are all thought to have subsurface liquid water, making them potentially habitable environments.

Additionally, in September 2022, NASAs Juno spacecraft which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016 is going to swoop within 220 miles of Europa, the closest-ever look at this fascinating moon. Its instruments will measure the thickness of the ice shell, which covers an ocean of liquid water.

All this action in the Solar System is exciting, but 2022 will also see new information from the edge of space and the dawn of time.

After successfully reaching its final destination, unfurling its solar panels and unfolding its mirrors in January, NASAs James Webb Space Telescope will undergo exhaustive testing and return its first data sometime midyear. The 21-foot (6.5-meter) telescope has seven times the collecting area of the Hubble Space Telescope. It also operates at longer wavelengths of light than Hubble, so it can see distant galaxies whose light has been redshifted stretched to longer wavelengths by the expansion of the universe.

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By the end of the year, scientists should be getting results from a project aiming to map the earliest structures in the universe and see the dawn of galaxy formation. The light these structures gave off was some of the very first light in history and was emitted when the universe was only 5% of its current age.

When astronomers look out in space they look back in time. First light marks the limit of what humanity can see of the universe. Prepare to be a time traveler in 2022.

Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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A lunar return, a Jupiter moon, the most powerful rocket ever built and the James Webb Space Telescope space missions to watch in the coming months -...

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins waves at the audience during the astronaut graduation ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas, on January 10, 2020. Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins waves at the audience during the astronaut graduation ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas, on January 10, 2020.

After an enrichment program at Sally Ride Elementary School, a young Jessica Watkins realized what she wanted to do when she grew up: study the geology of other planets.

Today, at 33 years old, Watkins is training for a mission to do just that.

This April, Watkins is set to become the first Black woman to live and work on the International Space Station for an extended mission. She will arrive there onboard a SpaceX capsule and then spend six months on the ISS as part of NASA's Artemis program, a multi-billion dollar effort designed to return humans to the surface of the moon in 2025.

"We are building on the foundation that was laid by the Black women astronauts who have come before me," Watkins told NPR's Morning Edition. "I'm definitely honored to be a small part of that legacy, but ultimately be an equal member of the crew."

Of the roughly 250 people who have boarded the ISS, fewer than 10 have been Black. Prior to the inception of the space station, Mae Jemison, an engineer and physician, became the first Black woman to travel to space in 1992. Other Black women have followed, including NASA astronauts Stephanie Wilson and Joan Higginbotham.

NASA selected Watkins for its astronaut program in 2017. She holds a bachelor's degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University and a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Watkins will cover a lot of ground on her mission: earth and space science, biological science and human research into things like the effects of long-duration spaceflight for humans. That's when the astronauts themselves become "the lab rats," Watkins told NPR.

Over the course of her six-month mission, Watkins will also observe and photograph geological changes on Earth.

Ahead of her journey, Watkins said she's done training on the systems of the International Space Station and how to fix anything if it isn't working properly. She's also practiced walking in space by wearing a puffy white suit in an underwater ISS mockup that's housed in a giant pool.

Watkins said the journey to space has wide-ranging implications on everything from medical research "with direct impacts into our daily lives," to international collaboration. Even amid tensions here on Earth between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine, she notes, the U.S. portion of the ISS is docked to the Russian segment.

"We are all coming together to accomplish this really hard thing that none of us would be able to do on our own," Watkins said. "I think that is just such a beautiful picture of what we can all do if we come together and put all of our resources and skill sets together."

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Jessica Watkins is getting ready to be the first Black woman to spend months in space - NPR

Beijing: China aims to strengthen its space infrastructure and develop a next-generation spacecraft for carrying people to space, as well as probe how to land people on the Moon, in the next five years, the media reported.

In a new white paper released on Friday, China has detailed plans for space exploration along with its achievements in the space sector since 2016, the Verge reported.

The achievements include expanding space capabilities, increasing the frequency and scope of its launches, and pushing into new areas such as the robotic exploration of Mars.

China has also mounted a long-term campaign of lunar exploration that entails sending a series of landers and rovers to the lunar surface every few years.

In 2019, the country became the first to land a rover on the far side of the Moon, and in 2020, China brought samples of the Moon back to Earth.

In 2021, the country also launched the core module of a new space station that will be built out in orbit around Earth. There are currently three astronauts living aboard the station, the report said.

In the next five years, China plans to send two additional robotic spacecraft to the Moon to study the lunar polar regions, areas of the lunar surface that are thought to be home to water ice.

The first probe will return lunar samples while the second will do a hopping detection in an area in permanent shadow, the report added.

The country is also going to study plans for its next lunar probe as well as work with international partners to build an international research station on the Moon, according to the white paper.

Besides Moon, China also hopes to launch probe to near-Earth asteroids in the next five years as well as study ways to send spacecraft to the Jupiter system and Mars again, with plans to bring back samples from the red planet.

Other space goals listed in the white paper include building Chinas space station, updating its satellite technologies, improving its space transportation and rocket systems, creating new rocket engines, among others, the report said.

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From civilian space travel to landing people on the Moon, China reveals ambitious space exploration plans - Sambad English

CHRIS HADFIELD: When we're born, we have a very small view of the world,.our mother's womb and the delivery room. And as you're raised, your parents are probably trying to control the environment that you're in, and so you end up with a very centralized tiny little view of the world, naturally. As you get older, as you travel more, as you read more, you start to understand a little more of the world around you. And all of those influences affect your choices in life. What are you gonna imagine that you could be? If you've never left Main Street, small town Ohio, then you're probably not gonna visualize yourself doing something that is wildly different than that. You're never going to be, uh, the head of a religious sect in, in Pakistan. You know, it's just, it's, it's not inside your worldview. You can only draw your own aspirations and hopes and decisions based on the things that you even know exist.

It's easier now to understand and see the world than ever in history. Our ability to communicate and our ability to travel has greatly improved. But space travel is sort of like the, the wildly exaggerated version of that where you can go around the whole world in the time it takes to eat supper and see everywhere, uh, see the whole world 16 times a day. That widens and deepens your worldview like nothing we've ever seen before in history. And it's very difficult to maintain, um, artificially drawn biases like, like nationalistic borders and, you know, my little tribe, my little street, my little gang, my little town, my little whatever when 15 minutes later you're over at the exact the same looking sort of town, but it's in Africa. And 40 minutes later the exact same looking sort of town and it's in Australia.

And then you come to Indonesia and you go, " Man, it's, it's all the same." They build the towns just like we build our towns. And, and what's, how, how are they, they then? It's just sort of all us. We're all doing this thing together, and everyone's got the same sort of hopes and dreams amongst themselves. And that pervasive sense of the shared collective experience of being a human being, that seeps into you on board a spaceship. Not the first time around. The first time is overwhelming. But somewhere, you know, 100 times around, 500 times around, suddenly, uh, the world becomes one place in your mind. It's not very big and, uh, and that, I think, is a really important worldview to have.

Life can be full of magnificent experiences. You know, um, being at the wedding of a loved one in a beautiful big house of worship somewhere, where there's the sound and the beauty and the structure, it affects how you feel that day. And, and you act a little bit differently. Or walking into a gigantic ancient redwood forest. Your, your head is naturally drawn upwards and, and you think a little different. It's not the same as just walking down your street. Well, imagine what it's like on spaceship where you're floating weightless at a window where you see an entire continent in, in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, where you go from L.A. to New York in nine minutes. And you see all of that history, and culture, and climate, and geography, and geology, and it's all right there underneath you. And you see a sunrise or a sunset every 45 minutes. You see the world for what it actually is. It has that same sort of, uh, personal effect you of a feeling of privilege and sort of a reverence, an awe that, uh, that is pervasive.

When we're floating in the, in the, the bulging window, the cupola of the space station, normally it's just one person 'cause everybody's busy. But if there's two of you in there, you talk in hushed tones to each other just because you feel like you're just wildly lucky to even be there to see this happening. And that sense of wonder, and privilege, and clarity of the world slowly shifts your view, of course. Your understanding of what is us and what is them? Um, what is old and what is new? What does four billion years actually mean? You know, where you can see where the ice ages were. You can see where the volcanoes were and the huge asteroid impacts and such. And it all starts to sort of shift in your head.

There was a fellow in the late '60s, early '70s who wrote a book sort of trying to capture that. He called it the overview effect. You can call it whatever you like. It doesn't have to be involved with space flight. It's more when you sense that there is something so much bigger than you, so much more, uh, deep than you are, ancient, um, has sort of a, a natural importance that dwarfs your own. But you're a person seeing it. You're a person that's interpreting it. You're, you're understanding it in your own way, and you'd have to be a stone to not have that affect you. It, it's, it changes how you think about things. But it's not the same for everybody and it's not instantaneous. It's not, it's not like, "Hey, I've gone over 60 miles an hour. I'm, you know, now done this thing." It's, it's very much a gradual creeping improvement in perception of the world around us. I think that's what the author was trying to talk about when, when he wrote about the overview effect.

Um, and some people are much more emotive and it affects them very deeply. Some people, they just have a better understanding of the world itself. Either way, it's healthy. It's a perspective of the world that allows us, hopefully, to make better collective global decisions about what's happening, less jealous, narrow, local decisions. And we need that type thinking if, if we're truly gonna have this many people and this standard of living for, for the foreseeable future. We just need to see the world as one place, the fact that we're all in this together, and that we are in the position to actually understand it and, and appreciate it, and therefore make different decisions about it.

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How looking at 4 billion years of Earth's history changes you - Big Think

If anyone has the credit of flying India's skills and talents to space far away from the soil of India, then popular astronaut Kalpana Chawla is also included in it. Kalpana Chawla, who is known for the successful flights of several NASA Space Shuttles. But Kalpana did her Astronaut life as a team of 6 members of Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS 87. During this, Kalpana gave India a different identity, this success of Kalpana became the success of India's daughter apart from the success of NASA's space mission.

Kalpana's flight came to a halt with the crash of the Columbia Space Shuttle on February 1, 2003, but even today it is an example to the world. Kalpana Chawla was born on 17 March 1962 in Karnal, Haryana. Her mother was Sanjayoti Chawla and her father was Banarasi Chawla. In her family, Kalpana was the youngest of four brothers and sisters. Kalpana was fondly called Montu. Kalpana's early studies took place at Tagore Bal Niketan. Since childhood, Kalpana went ahead with the desire to become an engineer. However, the father wanted to make Kalpana a doctor. Kalpana used to think about space travel from the very beginning. Kalpana received her early education from Tagore Public School, Karnal. In 1982, she moved to the United States of America. Where she earned a degree in science in aeronautical engineering. She also obtained a licence for commercial aircraft operations for single and multi-engine aircraft.

Kalpana's Main Mission- Kalpana Chawla joined NASA's Astronaut Corps in March 1995. After this, Kalpana went on to move towards the pinnacle of success. On November 19, 1997, she was selected for the first space mission. She began her mission from flight STS-87 of the space shuttle Columbia. This mission was very important for the life of the Kalpana. With this mission, Kalpana has made India's mark fly all over the world. During her first voyage to space, she spent 372 hours in space and completed 252 orbits of the Earth.

Kalpana Chawla made the final journey of her space trip after her trip to India. During this time she spent a holiday with her husband and children, but after coming from the vacation, the mission of STS 107 in the year 2000 was the final mission for her. On February 1, 2003, in order to return to Earth, the vehicle broke down as soon as it entered the Earth's orbit. Six other astronauts were also killed along with Kalpana in the incident.

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Flight of dreams of Kalpana had stopped on this day - News Track English