Monthly Archives: June 2023

HOUSTON, June 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Astronaut and retired U.S. Space Force Col. Mike Hopkins has retired from NASA after a career of 14 years that included 334 days in space and five spacewalks.

Hopkins' last spaceflight was as commander of NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station in 2020. Crew-1 was the first flight of a NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft system as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program, and the first flight of the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft "Resilience." His last day with NASA was May 1.

"I would like to express my heartfelt thank you to Mike Hopkins for his dedicated years of service in advancing our mission for the benefit of all humanity," said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Mike's unwavering commitment to mission excellence will continue to inspire generations to come."

The Crew-1 mission saw the first night splashdown of a U.S. crewed spacecraft since Apollo 8's return to Earth, and, at the time, broke the record for longest spaceflight by a U.S. crewed spacecraft. Crew-1 worked on a number of experiments as part of Expedition 64 aboard the space station.

"In a time where people needed it most, Mike Hopkins showed the world that there is no limit to what humans can achieve when we all work together," said Shannon Walker, deputy chief of NASA's Astronaut Office. "As his crewmate on the Crew-1 mission, I saw his resiliency, infectious spirit of exploration, and can-do attitude firsthand, and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors."

Hopkins also served as a flight engineer on the space station's Expedition 37/38 in 2014, launching aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. During the mission, Hopkins and his crewmates oversaw the departure of the first demonstration flight of the Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital Sciences) Cygnus resupply spacecraft and performed hundreds of hours of scientific experiments.

Over the course of his career, he conducted five spacewalks, totaling 32 hours working outside of the space station in a spacesuit to perform maintenance and upgrades to the station's exterior.

"For over 60 years, NASA has been changing the world, demonstrating that nothing is impossible when people and nations work together," Hopkins said. "For myself and my family, it has been a privilege to be a very small part of this amazing organization as it leads humanity's journey to the stars. "I have loved being an astronaut and leaving the corps was the hardest decision I've ever made. To my crewmates, fellow astronauts, and the entire NASA family, thank you for an incredible 14 years and Godspeed."

The Lebanon, Missouri, native began his NASA career in 2009 when he reported for duty alongside the other eight members of NASA's 20th astronaut class, graduating as a flight-eligible astronaut in 2011. He served in the U.S. Air Force prior to his selection and in a ceremony aboard the space station became the first astronaut to transfer his service to the Space Force. He retired from military service after 30 years at the same time as his NASA departure.

Hopkins graduated from the School of the Osage High School in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1991. He earned his master's degree in aerospace engineering from Stanford University in California in 1992.

Learn more about how NASA explores the unknown and innovates for the benefit of humanity at:

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NASA Astronaut Mike Hopkins Retires from the Agency - PR Newswire

NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan during a 2020 space walk at the International Space Station. Researchers theorize that the weightlessness astronauts experience on the ISS contributes to immune system dysfunction. NASA

Traveling to space is extremely taxing on the body, and for years, scientists have been trying to understand how astronauts muscles, bones, organs, blood and mental health are affected when they leave the familiar environment of Earths gravity.

Now, scientists say that space travel can reduce gene activity in some white blood cells, leading astronauts immune systems to suffer during trips to the International Space Station (ISS).

The research, published last week in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, looks at blood samples taken from 14 astronauts before, during and after stints of about six months at the ISS. Shortly after the astronauts arrived at the station, the expression of genes connected to the immune system decreasedand it didnt return to normal until after theyd come back to Earth.

The new findings add to the growing body of work documenting the effects of space travel on human health and physiology.

These results are important considerations of risks to health during spaceflight and space exploration, Myles Harris, who studies space health at the University College London and did not contribute to the research, tells BBC Science Focus Noa Leach.

Before this paper, we knew of immune dysfunction but not of the mechanisms, Guy Trudel, a co-author of the study and clinical researcher at the University of Ottawa in Canada, tells Reuters Will Dunham.

While the International Space Station is only a couple hundred miles from the groundclose enough to feel Earths gravityastronauts onboard experience weightlessness because the station is in free fall while orbiting the planet. This microgravity, as well as exposure to space radiation and the psychological impacts of isolation, affects the body in a number of ways.

Living in low gravity can cause people to lose bone density and muscle mass. Without gravity, fluids shift upward in the body, which can put pressure behind the eyes and cause vision problems, per NASA. Fluid-filled cavities in the brain known as ventricles expand during space flight, and a study earlier this month found it could take at least three years for this effect to subside after astronauts return to Earth.

Short- and long-term spaceflight negatively affects most physiological functions, write the authors of the new study.

Previous research has also shown that space travelers immune systems change, according to NASA. Studies have revealed that astronauts on the ISS sometimes experience cold symptoms and skin rashes and that dormant viruses the astronauts once had, such as herpes or chicken pox, can reactivate while in space, writes National Geographics Carrie Arnold.

For the new study, the astronaut participants11 men and three womenhad blood drawn once before takeoff, four times while on the ISS and five times after they returned to Earth.

The researchers looked at the gene expression in leukocytes, which are white blood cells made in the bone marrow that create proteins to ward off pathogens. After just 8 to 12 days in space, genes connected to immune function within these white blood cells decreased in activity. In 247 of the examined genes, expression was down to about one third of normal, according to Reuters.

These changes leveled off after two to six months in space, and they didnt go back to normal until within a month of astronauts return to Earth.

I was not expecting such a large change in gene expression. Why would the immune system go down in microgravity? study co-author Odette Laneuville, a molecular biologist at the University of Ottawa, tells National Geographic. There seems to be something special about space.

The researchers theorize that these changes were caused by exposure to microgravity as opposed to, say, space radiation, according to Reuters. When people are in microgravity, they experience a shift in how blood plasma is distributed throughout the body, which causes their volume of blood to drop by 10 to 15 percent, the authors write. As a result, there might not be enough room for all the immune cells in the blood, and the decreased gene expression could get rid of some cells, Laneuville tells Ari Daniel on NPRs All Things Considered.

The new findings shed light on how our bodies adapt to, and recover from, extreme environments.

Within minutes of being in space, your body is changing, Jamie Foster, an astrobiologist at the University of Florida who did not participate in the research, tells National Geographic. But I dont think we have a really good handle on the long-term changes yet.

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Why Astronauts Have Weaker Immune Systems in Space - Smithsonian Magazine

Scientists and chefs alike are working to revolutionize food technology to determine what astronauts on missions that take them away from Earth for years will eat to maintain both their physical and mental health.

Humanity is well in the midst of preparing for the next era of space exploration, which will involve long stays on the lunar surface and crewed journeys beyond the moon, potentially to the surface of Mars. NASA's Artemis program has undergone its first test flight and is expected to return humanity to the moon by 2025. After this, NASA will attempt to use the moon as a stepping stone for a crewed Mars mission.

Working with the Humanity in Deep Space initiative, University of Kentucky chef Bob Perry is cooking up a recipe for food and nutrition on longer space missions. To do this, the team is considering human flavor perception and how the brain makes use of sensory data to experience and remember food. This study, called neurological gastronomy or "neurogastronomy" allows the "human factor" to be considered when thinking about astronauts' health and nutrition.

Related: Space food: Why Mars astronauts wont have to hold the fries (video)

Neurogastronomy examines the relationship between humans, the food they eat and where food comes from, and this can be applied to the practicalities of eating in deep space.

"One of the primary concerns is the psychological impact on astronauts during long-duration space missions," UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment food lab coordinator and a founder of The International Society of Neurogastronomy, Bob Perry, said in a statement. "Through pioneering research and flight experiments, neurogastronomy explores various fascinating areas."

Humanity and Deep Space founding member Kris Kimel said that a journey to Mars from Earth would take around seven months each way, with astronauts expected to spend around a year on the Martian surface investigating the Red Planet. That means Mars explorers could spend between two and three years away from the home comforts of Earth.

"Understanding the relationship between the brain, the gut, and effects of long-term spaceflight is crucial," UK College of Social Work graduate Kimel added. "Growing food during the journey becomes a necessity."

International Space Station (ISS) crew members have already experimented with growing lettuce and other crops, but the challenge lies in scaling up production to sustain a crew of several individuals for stays in space longer than a few months.

Another critical aspect of astronaut food research is understanding how the microgravity environment of space impacts the digestive process and the communities of microorganisms that live in the stomach the microbiome of the gut. Examining gut health through the lens of neurogastronomy could help develop specially tailored diets for astronauts that optimize the number of nutrients they absorb while in deep space.

Another aspect of the deep-space experience that the team aims to understand is how microgravity affects the senses of taste and smell. This could help better formulate food that ensures that crews don't lose the enjoyment of food while far away from Earth.

Additionally, exploring new preservation and fermentation approaches could not only ensure food supplies last for the duration of long space missions but could also mean that there is variety in the diets of astronauts. This diversity of flavors and food textures could be important to the psychological health of astronauts by limiting so-called "menu fatigue."

"The isolation and confinement experienced in deep space can profoundly affect human psychology. If you go back throughout history, you find a table where people gather to eat food in every single society," Perry said. "Zero gravity cooking tools and applications become essential instruments for spacefarers, enabling them to navigate the challenges and prepare meals in a microgravity environment. Astronauts must also connect through food even in these most extraordinary circumstances."

Though it is primarily focused on deep space, the work undertaken by Perry and the Humanity and Deep Space initiative may also have implications closer to home, back here on Terra Firma.

That's because the knowledge and technology arrived at by Perry and the team could help lead to a sustainable closed-loop food system in space that could then be applied here on Earth. Optimizing the use of resources for deep space missions could also help improve food sustainability and reduce food waste for humans on our planet.

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Astronauts need better food for long-term deep space missions - Space.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA Europe's dark universe hunter is ready to leave its home planet.

Euclid, a dark matter and dark energy mission, is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here tomorrow (July 1) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Launch is scheduled for July 1 at 11:11 a.m. EDT (1511 GMT). A live webcast from NASA Television will be carried here at Space.com for free starting at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT).

After liftoff, Euclid will spend about a month journeying to the distant Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, on the opposite side of the sun to us and about 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. After another seven months of commissioning, the probe will spend six years studying the dark universe, gathering data that will shed light on the evolution of galaxies, the expansion of the universe and other physical phenomena.

"This is 15 years of people's lives," Carole Mundell, the European Space Agency's (ESA) director of science, said during a prelaunch briefing on June 23. "There were two teams that originally proposed missions, one to study dark energy and one to study dark matter. Both were incredibly challenging, but we thought, 'Well, that's not hard enough. Let's put them both together on a single spacecraft and do the impossible.' "

Related: James Webb Space Telescope will help Euclid spacecraft investigate dark energy and dark matter

Dark matter is believed to make up most of the material universe, but we can only see it through its gravitational effects. Dark energy is the force believed to be pushing along the accelerating expansion of the universe. Euclid aims to bring sharper eyes to the sky than ever before to try to demystify dark matter and dark energy.

As Mundell noted, the 1.4 billion-euro ($1.5 billion USD) Euclid was originally split among two mission concepts proposed to ESA in 2007: Dune (Dark Universe Explorer) and Space (Spectroscopic All Sky Cosmic Explorer). Euclid, selected in 2011, forges the complementary studies of these proposals to examine dark matter and dark energy across time and space.

Euclid will include two complementary experiments. The first examines lensing the "precise detail, the shapes of galaxies ... that goes back to 10 billion light-years," said Gaitee Hussain, head of ESA's science division, during the same briefing. The second study will scrutinize the redshifting of galaxies, or the light of receding galaxies being stretched into the red parts of the wavelength spectrum.

The images by Euclid will be four times sharper than equivalent ground surveys looking at large swaths of the sky, Hussain added. "That also requires really working hard on the technology to get the most out of the instrumentation we possibly can," Hussain said.

Euclid will carry out this work using two instruments. One will focus on visible light, whereas the other is optimized for infrared (heat) wavelengths.

Euclid is also complementary to other missions with ESA involvement that look at cosmic time, such as Europe's Gaia, which tracks the location of more than a billion objects in space, and the NASA-led James Webb Space Telescope, which is peering at some of the universe's first-ever stars and galaxies, among other tasks.

The forecast for launch on Saturday appears excellent. For the early morning before 8 a.m. local (the longest-range data available in the 24-hour forecast), Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will have clear skies and no chance of rain or lightning, with light winds of just five knots, according to the forecast from the U.S. Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45.

Elizabeth Howell is in Florida to cover Euclid's launch under co-sponsorship by Canadian Geographic magazine and Canada's University of Waterloo.Space.com has independent control of its news coverage.

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Europe's 'dark universe' Euclid spacecraft ready for July 1 SpaceX ... - Space.com

A new experiment led by biomedical engineering researchers at the University of Connecticut is taking place 254-miles off Earth inside NASAs International Space Station.

Connecting ISS astronauts to Storrs via videoconferencing is no easy feat, but a team of School of Engineering researchers made it happen this spring to facilitate experiments featuring life-saving nanomaterials.

Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Yupeng Chen, who is the principal investigator of these experiments, and his graduate students partnered with UConn-affiliated Eascra Biotech and Axiom Space.

Working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the teams are organizing a proof-of-concept study aboard the ISS involving the fabrication of Janus base nanomaterials (JBN), a family of novel biomaterials that mimic DNA.

Low-gravity experiments yield benefits across a wide range of health disciplines.

These biomaterials are potentially marketable and can be used in therapeutic and regenerative treatments for people with arthritis, cancer, and neurological diseases.

The whole family of Janus base nanomaterials are all formed by self-assembly, Chen says. Self-assembly is different from when we traditionally manufacture materials. We dont have full control. So we can only influence the self-assembly process by altering the environment. And of course, with microgravity, theres no forces and the materials can assemble much better into their structures.

Chens students all have various research interests.

For example, Ph.D. candidate Maxwell Landolina 22 (ENG) is specifically looking at a Janus base nanomatrix that is used to regenerate human cartilage.

Chen and his students used videoconferencing to communicate with ISS in late May from the Engineering and Science Building (EBS). Other graduate students on this project include Anne Yau 24 (BME), Ian Sands, Jin Zhai, Wuxia Zhang, Trystin Cote, Jinhyung Lee, Sidharth Masarur, Leah Faber, and Olivia Rice. Several undergraduate students are also assisting Chen and Landolina.

The UConn team used the relatively simple VLC Media Player and Microsoft Teams software to connect with the ISS in real time. Chen and Landolina instructed the two astronauts through the experiments.

Astronauts were well-prepped for the live videochat, having received careful instructions from the UConn researchers in the days preceding the call. Only a few small interjections from the Storrs crew were necessary, like when Landolina asked the ISS team to carefully scrape the samples from the sides of the test tubes to properly mix the materials.

The space team kept all the samples carefully contained in a large box, but they still had to keep an eye on the samples as they bumped and nudged each other in the absence of gravity.

One of the main challenges with coordinating the videocall was scheduling. Astronauts operate on an extremely tight schedule, working in 15-minute increments on other experiments and ISS maintenance duties.

In fact, the ISS moves at an incredibly high speed, orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes. This means the crew experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.

This is not my first space project, but its really interesting to see how all this comes together, Yau says. Its a cool process, Im really glad that Im in this mission.

Landolina seconded Yaus comment, and says that because he wants to eventually work in the regenerative medicine industry, he has appreciated seeing these public and private partnerships working together.

The NASA team completed the experiments perfectly, Chen says. After the nine-day, 3,867,500-mile journey, the astronauts carefully packed the assembled nanomaterials and testing equipment, sending them back to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft. On May 30 at 11:04 p.m. EDT, both the crew and the experimental materials safely splashed down off the coast of Florida.

Presently, the Chen lab is conducting a series of comprehensive tests on the nanomaterials fabricated in space.

Two additional missions through UConn, NASA, Axiom Space and Eascra Biotech are planned over the next 24 months are planned.

The long-term goal for Axiom Space and Eascra Biotech is to create a permanent manufacturing facility for therapeutic biomaterials in space.

Axiom Space is building an independent space station by 2028, says Chen, who is also a cofounder for Eascra Biotech. They are funding our missions at no cost because they want to find potential industry applications aboard the proposed space station. In missions two and three we will scale up the production of JBN and transfer the experiments to their station.

Nanomaterials are ultrafine particles of matter, usually between 1 and 100 nanometers (nm) in diameter. A nanometer is roughly one millionth of a millimeter, or about 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Materials engineered to such small scale can take on unique optical, magnetic, electrical and other properties with tremendous potential impact in the fields of electronics, medicine and beyond. Apply these materials in a low or no-gravity situation and the results can have profound impacts on the medical industry.

The $1.86 million contract through UConn, Eascra Biotech, and Axiom Space is one of only eight winning proposals submitted in response to NASA seeking space production applications for low-Earth orbit missions.

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NASA Astronauts Perform Life-Saving Nanomaterial Experiments for ... - University of Connecticut

Over the past week, campers ranging from 5th to 8th graders came to The Citadels campus to take part in the annual summer STEAM Camp. STEAM is an educational approach that combines science, technology, engineering, arts and math. This years theme was Out of This World: Cosmic Creativity, and campers had the opportunity to gain real-world knowledge about space from qualified Citadel faculty and cadets. Held over the course of five days, the STEAM Camp is an initiative between The Citadel Fine Arts Program and The Citadel STEM Center of Excellence, where campers participate in hands-on activities.

Our STEAM camp brings together the complementary resources of the STEM Center and the Fine Arts program to engage these wonderfully curious young minds in a college environment its been a highlight of our summer for the past seven years, said Tiffany Reed Silverman, director of The Citadel Fine Arts Program.

The first day of STEAM camp focused on setting the groundwork for the week and welcoming each camper. The Citadel faculty helping with the camp were also assisted by cadets from the Summer SUCCEED program, a service learning effort through the Krause Center for Leadership and Ethics that supports cadets and students as they devote their summer to full-time volunteer service in schools and camps to help youth flourish.

Campers were ready to tackle challenges on the second day of camp, starting off with learning and practicing different sewing techniques, a skill they would use later in the week. They built a topographic planet, built from stacking cut pieces of foam, as well as designing the architecture of their own space station to respond to their planets environment. In another class, campers learned block coding and how to navigate the universe through a Sphero, a small, spherical robot. Campers took photos around The Citadels campus for their extraterrestrial collages and had the opportunity to speak with veteran student Blake Behrends, an astrophotographer who showed them his own photos of space.

The exploration of the universe continued on day three, where campers began constructing systems using polymer clay and learned how form follows function. Campers also took a walk through space using virtual reality in The Citadel Makerspace located inside the Daniel Library. Other activities of the day included designing their own constellation watercolor paintings and completing space challenges using programmable robots and Morse code. Day three also had two special guests U.S. Space Force Col. Matthew Morand, 95, and Air Force Capt. David Melton, 14, who answered campers questions about the Space Force and aviation.

Candace Moorer and I ran the campers through a virtual reality spacewalk in which they explored and attempted to repair the International Space Station. This was a great opportunity to introduce them to VR if they hadntalready had experience with it and allow them to have an immersive experience of a potential STEAM job being an astronaut. We had a lot of fun seeing their various reactions to the experience, said Dan Hawkins, head of Public Services at the Daniel Library.

Nearing the end of STEAM Camp, the fourth day consisted of stitching their constellation watercolor paintings, painting three-dimensional topographic maps, learning Adobe Photoshop to create their own interplanetary environment and a camp favorite transforming two-liter bottles into rockets using the principles of aerodynamics, foam fins, nose cones and parachutes.

The final day of camp gave campers the chance to launch their bottle rockets on the parade field. Campers also created circuits with copper tape, painted backdrops of the galaxy and then ended their week-long space adventure with ice cream.

The STEM Center at The Citadel facilitates outreach initiatives to increase P-20 student interest, participation and opportunities in the STEM disciplines and develops innovative programming related to teacher preparation and teacher professional development activities. The Citadels Fine Arts Program produces principles leaders who are capable of critical and creative thinking about issues, ideas and values that are of importance to society.

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The Citadel's STEAM Camp takes students on a space adventure ... - The Citadel Today

In orbit, a shooting war would never really stop.

A violent conflict in Earth’s orbit could make space far more dangerous for human use long after hostilities cooled, according to a study published on Friday in the journal of Defense and Peace Economics.

The study found that a shooting war that destroyed 250 satellites would fill Earth’s orbit with more than 25 million pieces of deadly space debris.

Each new fragment would be the size of a marble or larger (1 centimeter, or 0.4 inches), and would be rocketing along at more than 22,000 miles an hour.

Such a conflict would increase the number of deadly space fragments that size — currently, there about half a million in Earth’s orbit — by a factor of more than 50.

And every single fragment would create a “potentially lethal” threat to spacecraft, study coauthor José Luis Torres of the University of Malaga wrote.

Those risks aren’t reserved to a full-scale war, the scientists noted.

Every satellite destruction could result in more than 100,000 new pieces of such high-speed shrapnel, the researchers found — which could take as long as 1,000 years to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

That means a conflict in the planet’s orbit would raise the chance of the dreaded Kessler Syndrome: an unintended cascade of space-based destruction which would severely limit — or even close off — human use of the orbit.

That’s a situation dramatized in Alfonso Caron’s 2013 science-fiction film Gravity, Space.com noted — and it’s one that the theory’s proponent says is already underway.

“The cascade process can be more accurately thought of as continuous and as already started,” former NASA scientist Don Kessler explained about the theory that bears his name.

In such a situation, “each collision or explosion in orbit slowly results in an increase in the frequency of future collisions,” Kessler added.

In Gravity, Cuaron depicts the syndrome as a row of falling orbital dominos set off by a blown-up spy satellite releasing a cloud of high-speed debris.

That cloud blows up more satellites, creating an ever-growing cloud that eventually takes out the International Space Station itself.

Kessler himself never envisioned the syndrome as a short-term event but rather as a gradual process in which human-caused debris would become — by a process of exponential growth — a bigger threat to space-based activity than meteorites.

But Kessler also published his seminal 1978 work detailing the potential phenomenon decades before China carried out the first anti-satellite missile test in 2007, which Russia followed with its own test in 2021.

The U.S., meanwhile, has banned the practice — in part, perhaps, because of the risk of blowback.

Such anti-satellite missile tests “dramatically increase the probability that the Kessler syndrome will occur,” the scientists wrote.

While space is infinite for practical purposes, the parts most useful to human civilization are decidedly limited. 

The more than 8,000 satellites we rely on for science, navigation and communications are all within about 22,000 miles of the earth’s surface — with 90 percent within about 3,000 miles.

That makes space analogous to the ocean: an immense whole accessible only through a far more congested — and contested — fringe of usable coastline.

And like the geopolitics of coastal territories in contested seaways — notably the South and East China Sea — those regarding space have been heating up.

The U.S. Space Force — the newest branch of the military — is preparing for conflicts that spill over into space, security news site Defense One reported this week.

That preparation marks a creeping shift away from the understanding written into the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

The agreement bars “the establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies.”

While the treaty left some gray area — enough to allow space agency NASA to draw from military officers and researchers — even during the Cold War, space remained remarkably peaceful.

Now tensions in Earth’s orbit increasingly match those below.

When first learning to pilot satellites in the years before China’s anti-satellite test, “I didn’t really train against an adversary trying to destroy my satellite or deny its capabilities. That just wasn’t required,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, told Defense One.

But the Pentagon increasingly appears to view space — home to the strategically vital communication, guidance and navigation systems that guide Earthbound weapons — as a logical extension of conflicts on the planet below.

Under the Trump administration — which established the Space Force — the military’s chief of space operations called for “an order of magnitude expansion of our ability to protect and defend American interests in cislunar space and beyond.”

The Pentagon has also invested in a network of surveillance satellites and is developing the technology to build potential bases for orbit around Earth and the moon. Meanwhile, China and the Pentagon are attempting to find ways to destroy satellites — for aggression or maintenance — without leaving behind debris, an effort that may be motivated by the risk of Kessler syndrome.

In 2021, one Chinese satellite — the “space tug” SJ-21 — grabbed another defunct Chinese satellite in its robotic arms and pulled it a few hundred miles into an unstable “super-graveyard drift orbit.”

In such a trajectory, the dead satellite will spiral into the Earth’s gravity well until it burns up against the high friction of our atmosphere — leaving behind no orbital debris.

Such technologies could imply a beginning of “grappling”-based space conflict, the commander of the U.S. space command told Congress in 2021.

According to military contractor Northrop Grumman, a new generation of U.S. grapplers may be on the horizon — though the contractor only listed civilian applications.

The aerospace company is collaborating with the Naval Research Laboratory to deploy an “autonomous” robotic arm for spacecraft by 2025.

The arm will be able to grab and manipulate spacecraft “that were not designed to be grappled,” Bill Vincent, director of the Navy lab, told Breaking Defense.

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Orbital shooting war would risk ending the space age, scientists find - The Hill

Virgin Galactic successfully flew its first paying customers to the final frontier Thursday, a long-awaited achievement that puts it back on track in the emerging private spaceflight sector.

Italian Air Force officers unfurled their nation's flag and peered out windows at the curve of Earth while enjoying a few minutes of weightlessness at 52.9 miles (85.1 kilometers) above sea level.

"It was a beautiful ride," Colonel Walter Villadei told reporters at a press conference, adding that his favorite moment was seeing the contrast between the black of space and the planet beneath.

The mission dubbed Galactic 01 began when a giant, twin-fuselage "mothership" aircraft took off from a runway at Spaceport America, New Mexico, around 8:30am local time (1430 GMT).

The carrier plane gained high altitude, then around 40 minutes later released a rocket-powered plane, called VSS Unity, which soared into space at nearly Mach 3.

Fifty miles is considered the border of space by NASA and the US Air Force, though the internationally recognized boundary, known as the Karman Line, is 62 miles high.

Villadei was joined in the cabin by Lieutenant Colonel Angelo Landolfi of the Italian Air Force, Pantaleone Carlucci of the National Research Council of Italy, and Colin Bennett of Virgin Galactic.

There were also two pilots on the spaceplane, and two on the carrier plane.

Unity later glided back safely to Earth, a livestream showed.

The flight came almost two years after Virgin Galactic's founder Richard Branson flew to space in a test flight meant to usher in a new era of lucrative space tourism.

But the company subsequently faced setbacks, including a brief grounding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which found the Branson flight deviated from its assigned airspace and Virgin Galactic did not communicate the "mishap" as required.

Later, lab testing revealed certain materials used in its vehicles had fallen below required strength margins, necessitating upgrades to the fleet.

The company ended its spaceflight pause with a successful test in May, paving the way for Thursday's mission. In total, it ran five test flights before Thursday's commercial flight.

AFP

This still image from a Virgin Galactic video shows Galactic 01 mission crew members from the Italian Air Force display the Italian flag as they reach space during the first commercial flight from Spaceport City in New Mexico on June 29

Monthly flights

The Galactic 01 crew were tasked with conducting 13 supervised and autonomous experiments, and collecting data on their suits and sensors in the cabin.

Experiments included measuring radiation levels in the under-studied mesosphere, and how certain liquids and solids mix in microgravity.

Villadei explained that researchers wanting to work in microgravity currently only have two options: parabolic airplane flights, where passengers experience a few seconds of weightlessness, and missions to the International Space Station, which last six months.

Virgin Galactic thus offers a "gap filler," he said, and the size of the spaceplane allowed for larger experiments than could be fit in a rocket.

Founded in 2004, Virgin Galactic has sold around 800 tickets for seats on future commercial flights 600 between 2005 and 2014 for US$200,000 to US$250,000, and 200 since then for $450,000 each.

Movie stars and celebrities were among the first to snap up seats, but the company's program suffered a disaster in 2014 when a spaceplane on a test flight broke apart midair, killing the copilot and seriously injuring the pilot.

The company is now looking to the future. The next mission, Galactic 02, is set for August, and then it hopes to make monthly space hops after that.

AFP

This still image from a Virgin Galactic video shows the Galactic 01 mission spacecraft launching the first commercial flight from Spaceport City in New Mexico on June 29.

Branson, Bezos and Musk

Virgin Galactic competes in the "suborbital" space tourism sector with billionaire Jeff Bezos's company, Blue Origin, which has already sent 32 people into space using a vertical lift-off rocket.

But since an accident in September 2022 during an unmanned flight, Blue Origin's rocket has been grounded. The company promised in March to resume spaceflight soon.

Elon Musk's SpaceX meanwhile has collaborated with partner companies to send paying customers higher up, into Earth orbit or to the International Space Station.

But chartering a SpaceX rocket is a much more costly affair. Tickets for the ISS in joint SpaceX-Axiom Space missions are reported to run into tens of millions of dollars.

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Virgin Galactic finally takes its first paying customers to space - SHINE News

Virgin Galactic completed its first commercial mission following the successful sub-orbital journey of VSS Unity. The spacecraft reached an altitude of around 53 miles carrying two Italian air force colonels and an aerospace engineer plus crew.

The 'Galactic 01' mission took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 08:30 on June 29th carrying its first paying customers. The craft's VMS Eve mothership reached an altitude of 45,000ft before VSS Unity separated and engaged its rocket systems to exit the Earth's atmosphere.

The three customers - Walter Villadei, Angelo Landolfi, and Pantaleone Carlucci - were all members of the Italian Air Force on a research mission. The craft was piloted by Michael Masucci and Nicola Pecile, accompanied by Virgin Galactic instructor Colin Bennett.

Crew commander Col. Walter Villadei announced upon completion of the roughly 90-minute filght,

"Mission accomplished. We accomplished all our experiments. Its a very important achievement for us."

Virgin Galactic can now consider itself an official player in the lucrative sub-orbital tourism industry, something almost two decades in the making since its launch in 2004. Its only direct competitor at the moment is Blue Origin - founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos - which has already carried over 30 paying customers into space. However, following an accident last September during an unmanned mission, Blue Origin has suspended flights but plans to resume operations soon.

Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement,

"This historic flight was our first commercial flight and our first dedicated commercial research mission ushering in a new era of repeatable and reliable access to space for private passengers and researchers."

During the journey, researchers conducted various data-gathering experiments - of particular importance was Unity's extended window of microgravity conditions, over three minutes to be exact. As explained by Virgin Galactic, the research will "examine the biomedicine thermo-fluid dynamics, and the development of innovative and sustainable materials in microgravity conditions."

As reported by Albuquerque Journal, Villadei added,

"International opportunities for microgravity research are limited to only 20 to 30 seconds on rockets, or six months on the International Space Station. Theres nothing in between. [VSS Unity] expands the possibilities for the research community."

One of the researchers wore a 'Spacewear Smart Flight Suit 1', an advanced flight suit that can withstand over 6G of acceleration and is fitted with a device to measure biometric data.

The spacecraft carried a total of 13 research payloads onboard with various objectives, including:

The company's next commercial spaceflight - Galactic 02 - is scheduled for August and will be the first spaceflight carrying private paying customers. As with Galactic 01, the second August mission can be watched via live stream on the Virgin Galactic website.

Should Galactic 02 prove a success, Virgin Galactic aims to operate a commercial spaceflight every month thereafter. This week's successful spaceflight is good news for Virgin Group, which suffered a setback in January when now-defunct Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne mission failed.

Are you happy to see Virgin Galactic complete its first revenue spaceflight? Do you think the company will manage to operate one spaceflight a month by the end of this year? Let us know in the comments.

Source: Albuquerque Journal

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Virgin Galactic's Galactic 01 Reaches Space With First Scientific ... - Simple Flying

A spider web-like network of earthquake stations is aiming for the moon.

Australian company Fleet Space received funding to develop its Seismic Payload for Interplanetary Discovery, Exploration and Research, or SPIDER, to detect seismic quakes on the moon in the future. The early-stage $4 million AUS ($2.65 million USD) contract is not for an imminent landing mission, but for technology development. The eventual goal is to bring a trio of seismic monitors to the moon for one lunar "day" (14 days on Earth) to help locate valuable resources below the lunar surface.

SPIDER aims to record moonquakes continuously for up to 14 days and will launch "aboard a commercial lander" that has not been selected yet. The test of compact geophysical equipment will be useful not only for the moon, but also for remote environments on Earth or Mars "We are explorers with a mission to revolutionize mineral exploration from Earth to the moon and Mars," the company wrote in a statement.

Related: Moonquakes rattle the moon as it shrinks like a raisin

Fleet Space CEO Matthew Pearson stated that the Australian Space Agency funding will be key to helping his country support the NASA-led Artemis Accords moon program.

"We are poised to be the first Australian technology to touch down on the surface of the moon, supporting humanity's efforts towards [lunar exploration] and aligning with NASA's Artemis program, with a future vision of Martian exploration supporting the hunt for life beyond our planet," Pearson said in a statement.

Australia was one of the first signatories of the Artemis Accords, a NASA framework for moon exploration as well as an effort to establish international peaceful norms for space exploration. (The addition of India and Ecuador in recent weeks brought the number of participating nations to 27.)

NASA aims to bring humans to the moon's south pole in 2025 or 2026 with the Artemis 3 mission, and has funded numerous robotic payloads under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program that may see its first mission touch down as soon as this year. The moon-circling Artemis 2 has a crew in training, and a launch date of November 2024.

Fleet is funded under the Australian government's $40 million AUS ($26.45 million USD) "moon to Mars initiative" aiming to help countries get ready for moon exploration. It's similar to NASA's CLPS or Canada's Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (LEAP), to name a couple of Artemis signatories.

Other recent news by Fleet includes raising $50 million AUS ($33 million USD) in a Series C fundraising round, building out an ExoSphere set of satellites to scan for minerals in Earth orbit, and signing with Australia's Defense Space Command for a demonstrator satellite communications system.

The first lunar seismometers were deployed by the Apollo program astronauts between 1969 and 1972 during several of the program's six successful landing missions. All remaining functional seismometers were turned off in 1977 to save money, despite having a modest yearly cost of $1 million ($5 million in 2023 dollars), according to the New York Times.

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Moonquake-hunting 'SPIDER' probes could detect lunar temblors on ... - Space.com