Daily Archives: May 25, 2022

Boeing's Starliner as it prepared for launchat Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida last week. NASA / Joel Kowsky

Two and a half years later than initially planned, Boeings Starliner spacecraft successfully reached the International Space Station last week. The arrival marks an important milestone in NASAs bid to partner with commercial companies to transport astronauts to and from the aging space station.

After launching from Florida'sCape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday, the unmanned vessel arrived and docked at the space station on Friday, where astronauts opened its hatch and unloaded 800 pounds of food and supplies. The Starliner will remain docked there for four or five days while crews pack it with cargo to take back to Earth.

Many people back on Earth breathed a sigh of relief when the Starliner reached the space station during a mission thats been dubbed Orbital Flight Test-2. In 2019, software issues prevented the uncrewed spacecraft from reaching the space station and, in 2021, Boeing postponed its second attempt because of a mechanical issue.

Since then, Boeing staffers have been hard at work troubleshooting and correcting the issues. Meanwhile, NASAs other commercial partner, SpaceX, has taxied five crews to the space station since May 2020.

If all goes to plan for the remainder of this Starliner mission, NASA may be confident enough to put astronauts on the Boeing vessel in the near future, likely by the end of next year. Researchers are measuring g-forces and other impacts to the human body during Starliners mission with help from Rosie the Rocketeeer, a test dummy named for World War IIs Rosie the Riveter.

After retiring its space shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA entered into crew transportation agreements with Boeing and SpaceX in 2014. The space agency is partnering with two companies, instead of just one, to create redundancies in case something goes wrong with one or the other, reports Kenneth Chang for the New York Times. Partnering with commercial companies also allows NASA to be less reliant on Russia for transporting astronauts. For years, NASA paid Russia to transport astronauts to the space station, an arrangement that's become increasingly problematic amid growing political tensions between the two countries.As Air & Space's Tony Reichhardt reported in 2018, the new commercial vessels may also be safer than NASA's space shuttles, which had a 1-in-90 chance of a fatal accident.

The Starliner had a few minor issues during the orbital approach and docking phase of this mission, reports the Washington Posts ChristianDavenport. Two of Starliners 12 main thrusters did not fire after the vessel separated from the Atlas V rocket that launched it into space, but other thrusters automatically fired up to compensate. The thrusters worked without issue during subsequent tests.

We have a lot of redundancy, Steve Stich, manager of NASAs commercial crew program, said at a news conference, as reported by the New York Times. That really didnt affect the rendezvous operations at all.

The Starliners temperature control system also malfunctioned, but Boeing staffers overcame that issue by making manual adjustments that would typically be automated, per the Washington Post.

Still, both Boeing and NASA officials were buoyed by the mission so far and are optimistic that Starliner will become a viable space taxi for astronauts.

"Those are the kinds of things we expect in flight test and that is why we test," says Robert Hines, a NASA astronaut onboard the International Space Station, as reported by Space.coms Josh Dinner. "If we didn't find something like that we're probably doing something wrong."

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Boeing's Starliner Reaches the International Space Station | Smart News - Smithsonian Magazine

"And I realized at one point that all the bad guys were Russians."Movie Night

Things have been a little more tense than usual on board the International Space Station lately, given the geopolitical crisis brewing back on the ground.

For the most part with the exception of several bizarre incidents operations have largely continued as planned, with American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts working alongside one another peacefully.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who recently spent 355 days on board the aging orbital outpostbefore returning to Earth on a Russian spacecraft, recentlysat down with The Washington Post for an interview probing those issues and more.

On one level, Vande Hei said that he would sometimes poke holes in cosmonauts logic, implying that they would sometimes spar about international issues. On the other, though, he said that his time on the station has sometimes forced him to confront American cultures misrepresentations of Russian people and that it all came to a head on movie night.

Stereotypes run deep in Hollywood, which sometimes made catching up on cinema during the stations weekly movie nights awkward.

I realized at one point that all the bad guys were Russians, Vande Hei told WaPo. It kind of gives me chills even thinking about it because at one point, I looked at my cosmonaut crewmates and said, How does that make you feel? And they said, Its kind of scary when we see that everybody in the United States, the mass media in the United States, is portraying Russians as the bad guys.'

The crew adapted by adopting a strategy in which everybody got a turn to pick a movie theyd seen and wanted to share with everybody else, Vande Hei recalled.

A further clue about contemporary US-Russian relations on the station: Vande Hei said the movie nights were on a previous flight, suggesting that NASA and Roscosmos space voyagers are no longer getting together for the weekly ritual.

READ MORE: How this astronaut approached U.S.-Russian relations in space [The Washington Post]

More on the ISS: NASA Alarmed That Astronauts Spacesuits Keep Filling Up With Water

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Things Apparently Got Awkward During Movie Night on the Space Station - Futurism

Astronauts on the International Space Station have developed a green thumb, growing a variety of plants while in space.

Red romaine lettuce, mustard plants, and peppers are being grown on the Vegetable Production System, a space garden on the space station, and the Advanced Plant Habitat, a growth chamber for plant research.

PLANTS SPROUT FROM MOON SOIL IN GROUNDBREAKING TEST

"It's really fun to see all these leafy greens that we've been growing in space for the last few years because the astronauts can eat them right away. We call them pick-and-eat crops. We grow them. They can pick them and eat them right away," said Christina Johnson, post-doctoral fellow at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in a podcast episode of Gravity Assist published Friday. "We're looking not at replacing their diet. We're looking at supplementing their diet. So, it's like, OK, they can make lettuce wraps with this lettuce. They can do all these fun things with the food that they have."

Plants grown on the space station are being used as a nutrient-rich food option to supplement freeze-dried and prepackaged meals that astronauts receive.

"So, spicy hot peppers grew in the advanced plant habitat, and those did so well, and the astronauts loved them, and they took their tortillas and made tacos with them and things when it came time to eat them," Johnson said.

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Through the space garden, astronauts have successfully grown a variety of plants, including three types of lettuce, Chinese cabbage, mizuna mustard, red Russian kale, and zinnia flowers.

Scientists hope the garden will provide astronauts with the ability to grow supplemental food crops for longer missions as NASA explores space, including possible trips to Mars.

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Space botany: Astronauts grow peppers, lettuce, and more on space station - Washington Examiner

Japanese astronauts will ride on NASA Artemis missions to the moon, and potentially even reach the surface, amid an interagency push to expand lunar exploration.

President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida confirmed that commitment Monday (May 23) during a meeting in Tokyo, NASA and the White House said in separate announcements.

A Japanese astronaut will visit NASA's planned Gateway moon-orbiting space station, and the two leaders also said they have a "shared ambition" to put a Japanese astronaut on the moon, NASA officials stated (opens in new tab).

Related: NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission explained in photos

"I'm excited about the work we'll do together on the Gateway station around the moon and look forward to the first Japanese astronaut joining us in the mission to the lunar surface under the Artemis program," Biden stated in the agency announcement.

Japan's space work is part of a larger set of agreements between that country and the United States on matters ranging from 5G cellular networks to cybersecurity to science and technology collaborations, a White House explainer document (opens in new tab) indicated.

If confirmed, the space agreement would see Japan further expand its range and reach of exploration following prominent missions of the past few years. It also would align with Kishida's inauguration promises since October to put a Japanese astronaut on the lunar surface, including revising Japan's space policy (opens in new tab) to include a push for a crewed landing on the moon.

Japan is a major space player already. In December 2020, for example, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) brought back a sample of an asteroid to Earth. JAXA is a long-time International Space Station (ISS) partner, best known, perhaps, for its Kibo science module and robotic arm technology. And later this year, veteran astronaut Koichi Wakata will become the first Japanese person to join a SpaceX Dragon mission to the ISS.

JAXA is looking to refresh its astronaut corps. The agency opened its first recruitment in 13 years in 2021 and attracted a record 4,127 applicants (opens in new tab) for the opportunity, the Japan Times reported.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is working in a rapidly changing international space arena. Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 is still ongoing and has broken apart numerous space partnerships; while the ISS interagency agreement persists with Russia, there are no guarantees the orbital complex will see its mission extended beyond 2024, even though Biden has authorized the United States to continue operations for six years more.

The United States is rapidly expanding its space work in Asia. On May 21, Biden and South Koreas president Yoon Suk-yeol held a summit in Seoul, during which Biden agreed to expand their collaborations "across all sectors of space cooperation," according to SpaceNews (opens in new tab).

Japan is a signatory to the Artemis Accords that seek to govern civil space activities among allies; several more nations have signed on to the agreement in recent weeks, bringing the total number of participants to 19. The United States and Japan plan to deepen their accord via an implementing arrangement later in 2022.

The White House wrote (opens in new tab) that the forthcoming agreement "will expand bilateral cooperation for decades to come across a wide variety of space exploration, scientific and research activities."

That collaboration is symbolized by the two nations trading asteroid samples from two recent missions, the White House noted. Japan has already given over a sample of Ryugu returned to Earth in December 2020 by its Hayabusa2 mission, and NASA will do the same with bits of the asteroid Bennu in 2023 via the returning Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft.

More specifics are not available yet on how Japan and the United States will conduct the implementing arrangement, but a similar arrangement with the United Arab Emirates in 2018 established some regulations for cooperation, training procedures and ground-based research projects. It also allowed for UAE astronauts to come on board the ISS, starting with Hazza Al Mansoori in 2019.

Earth observation may also form a part of the forthcoming agreement, given that this activity was highlighted in the White House fact sheet. "The United States and Japan are cooperating to use Earth observation data to improve our capability to predict how our climate is changing," the White House stated.

This is likely an allusion to a May 19 NASA announcement (opens in new tab) of a new "dashboard" allowing for public access to climate information. The dashboard includes Japanese and European Space Agency information based upon individual and shared missions by the three space agencies.

NASA's ultimate goal for human exploration in the 2020s is to return astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time since 1972. It also plans to extend the short-term Apollo explorations with a permanent landing presence near the lunar south pole, where water ice appears to be abundant inside permanently shadowed craters. The Gateway lunar station will support these missions in orbit around the moon.

One other country besides the United States already has a committed seat on an Artemis mission. Canada, an early signatory to Artemis, promised a robotic arm in 2019 known as Canadarm3 to support Gateway operations. In exchange, the Canadians received several astronaut seats on future missions, among them the Artemis 2 mission that will circle the moon no earlier than 2024. Landings should start in 2025 with Artemis 3, if current schedules hold.

That said, this timeline in large part depends upon Artemis 1, an uncrewed around-the-moon test mission that NASA aims to launch this summer. The mission cannot lift off until NASA completes a "wet dress rehearsal" of the Space Launch System megarocket that will launch it. The wet dress originally started on April 1 but was delayed and then halted by several technical issues. NASA plans to resume the testing next month.

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Japan will send an astronaut to the moon with NASA, President Biden says - Space.com

Learn more about the intersection of food and culture on the International Space Station.

In honor of Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, learn about the intersection of food and culture in space from NASA astronaut Sunita Suni Williams, whose father immigrated to the U.S. from India, and International Space Station (ISS) food scientist/system manager Xulei Wu, a first-generation Asian American born in China.

Hear their stories about cultural representation in space, the importance of food in Indian and Chinese cultures, and the inclusive standard menu aboard the ISS.

Video Transcript:

This is our kitchen. You might notice theres all sorts of foods here. Its like opening the refrigerator, you got all your different stuff that you want to have.

Food in the Indian culture is super important. It is like the time of course when everybody gathers but it means so much to have somebody prepare food for somebody else and give it to them as a gift.

At the JC space food systems laboratory, we develop, process, package, and supply the majority of the food on ISS for US OS crew members.

So we have all this type of food. Some of it is dehydrated and so we have to hydrate it, fill it up with water. Some of it is already made, and then all we have to do is heat it up.

Food on the ISS is sort of an example of the many cultures that come and live on the International Space Station.

Among the standard menu, there are about 10 percent of main dishes that are inspired by Asian culture. They bring a unique flavor profile and allow ways to compensate for the low sodium requirement we have to meet. This adds to the variety to the food system.

When I realized that there were Indian dishes on the standard menu I was pretty excited because this is something that Ive eaten for my whole life, grew up with, in particular, reminds me of when I was a kid and at home with my family.

There is a popular Chinese proverb which means that food is most important to the people.

Food is always present in our traditions. In any forms of rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations.

So meal time on the ISS is a little bit varied, but really the most important meal in my mind is dinner. Because thats really at the close of the day. Everybodys sort of winding down. Everyone can eat dinner together which is really nice. Sharing food from maybe your family or your culture and telling each other about where it came from when you experienced it and what that means to you and your family.

NASA celebrates Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

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Whats on the Menu? Food and Culture on the International Space Station - SciTechDaily

Does the ocean need its version of the International Space Station?

A Canadian research centre based in Halifax says the answer is yes and is promoting an ambitious observation system for the North Atlantic.

"The North Atlantic Carbon Observatory is a structure that allows nations to invest in ocean observation as a consortium, the way they do in the International Space Station or with some international telescopes," saidAnya Waite, CEO and scientific director of the Ocean Frontier Institute.

The North Atlantic, and Labrador Sea in particular, is one of the largest carbon sinks on the planet, where carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is absorbed and stored deep in the ocean.

Understanding its role in mitigating greenhouse gases is behind the proposed carbon observatory and one of the themes at an Ocean Frontier Institute conference underway in Halifax this week.

"We need to reduce uncertainty in the carbon uptake," Katja Fennel, a professor in the oceanography department at Dalhousie University, told the conference Tuesday. Fennel was awarded a $3-million Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant to deploy Argo autonomous floats in the North Atlantic to measure changing ocean conditions.

"We need better predictive understanding for projectionsfor carbon accounting, monitoring and verification of carbon dioxide reduction."

So do businesses like e-commerce company Shopify.

It was the first to buy carbon credits from Nova Scotia-based Planetary Technologies, which wants to use purified mine tailings to neutralize carbon in the ocean.

Stacy Kauk, Shopify's head of sustainability, saidit is a bet on a good idea, but companies like hers need more certainty if carbon credits are based on promised benefits derived from the ocean.

"We basically buy an odourless, colourless gas that's going to be stored in the ocean," Kauk told the conference. "You can't see it. You can't touch it. You can't feel it. And we're actually not doing the work. We're buying an environmental attribute.

"In order for that to be something that we can rely on to allocate against our corporate carbon footprint down the road in the future, we need monitoring, reporting and verification protocols to give us the confidence to be a buyer."

These are big questions, and Ocean Frontier Institute is promoting its observatory as a way to co-ordinate and expand international efforts already underway to better understand carbon absorption and what to do about it.

"It's about getting that global reach and integration, then coming to a solution, figuring out the design of how you then execute," says Waite.

In briefing notes from May 27, 2021 prepared for then Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan, officials were hesitant to commit to the project, saying DFO "does not have incremental resources to scale up ocean observation capacity from existing levels."

The note was in preparation for a meeting with Clearwater Seafood founder and billionaire John Risley, who was lobbying for the observatory project.

The notesaid proponents suggested the cost to Environment and Climate Change Canada would be $40 million, but Risley told the previous minister "it was too early to discuss potential resources."

The note was obtained by CBC News through an access-to-information request.

"Because the NACO has not yet been scoped. It is not possible to estimate the resource implications for DFO. While Dr. Waite has indicated a cost of $40-million to Environment and Climate Change Canada; it is understood that Mr Risley subsequently told (then ECCC) Minister Wilkinson that it was too early to discuss potential resources," the briefing note reads.

DFO Minister Joyce Murray, Innovation Minister Franois-Philippe Champagne and Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault have been briefed.But Canada has not committed to the project.

Guilbeault did not even mention it in his opening remarks to the Halifax conference.

Waite saidthe project is making progress with the federal government.

"We're working with three or four ministries right now. We've talked to ministers, but also to the researchers and the modellers. I think what's happening is that the conversation is getting more intense and we're starting to flesh out what are the roles of federal agencies in such a big program."

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Scientists push for ocean version of International Space Station - CBC.ca