Daily Archives: May 21, 2024

An innovative rocket system could revolutionize future deep space missions to Mars, reducing travel time to the Red Planet to just a few months.

The goal of landing humans on Mars has presented a myriad of challenges, including the need to quickly transport large payloads to and from the distant planet, which, depending on the positions of Earth and Mars, would take almost two years for a round trip using current propulsion technology.

The Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR), under development by Howe Industries, is a propulsion system designed to be far more efficient than current methods of deep space propulsion, enabling the trip between Earth and the Red Planet to be made in just two months. Specifically, the rocket will have a high specific impulse or Isp, a measure of how efficiently an engine generates thrust. This technology could therefore enable astronauts and cargo to travel to and from Mars more efficiently and rapidly than existing spacecraft, according to a statement from NASA.

Related: How long does it take to get to Mars?

Stemming from the Pulsed Fission Fusion concept, the PPR uses a fission-based nuclear power system, which obtains energy from the controlled splitting of atoms, to generate thrust for spacecraft propulsion. However, the PPR is smaller, simpler and more affordable than previous concepts.

In addition to enabling further range missions, the PPR could support much heavier spacecraft, meaning additional shielding could be installed to reduce a crew's exposure to harmful high-energy particles, called Galactic Cosmic Rays, endured during long-duration spaceflight.

"The PPR enables a whole new era in space exploration," NASA officials said.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

"The exceptional performance of the PPR, combining high Isp and high thrust, holds the potential to revolutionize space exploration," the statement reads. "The system's high efficiency allows for manned missions to Mars to be completed within a mere two months."

The PPR concept is now moving into Phase II of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) study, having completed Phase I, which focused on the neutronics of the propulsion system, designing the spacecraft, power system and necessary subsystems, analyzing the magnetic nozzle capabilities, and determining trajectories and benefits, according to the statement.

During Phase II, developers will build upon the assessments from Phase I to optimize the engine design, perform proof-of-concept experiments and design a spacecraft concept to better protect crewed flights to Mars. Currently visited only by robotic explorers, the PPR could one day bring NASA closer to establishing a permanent base on Mars.

Go here to see the original:

NASA-funded pulsed plasma rocket concept aims to send astronauts to Mars in 2 months - Space.com

Howe Industries is developing a Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR) capable of producing 100,000 N of thrust with a specific impulse of 5,000 seconds, promising to revolutionize space travel by enabling faster and safer manned missions to Mars and beyond. (Artists concept.) Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Howe Industries PPR could transform space exploration with its high thrust and specific impulse, enabling faster Mars missions and safe transport through enhanced shielding.

The future of a space-faring civilization will depend on the ability to move both cargo and humans efficiently and rapidly. Due to the extremely large distances that are involved in space travel, the spacecraft must reach high velocities for reasonable mission transit times. Thus, a propulsion system that produces a high thrust with a high specific impulse is essential. However, no such technologies are currently available.

Simplified image of the PPR system. Credit: Brianna Clements, edited

Howe Industries is currently developing a propulsion system that may generate up to 100,000 N of thrust with a specific impulse (Isp) of 5,000 seconds. The Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR) is originally derived from the Pulsed Fission Fusion concept, but is smaller, simpler, and more affordable.

The exceptional performance of the PPR, combining high Isp and high thrust, holds the potential to revolutionize space exploration. The systems high efficiency allows for manned missions to Mars to be completed within a mere two months. Alternatively, the PPR enables the transport of much heavier spacecraft that are equipped with shielding against Galactic Cosmic Rays, thereby reducing crew exposure to negligible levels.

The system can also be used for other far-range missions, such as those to the Asteroid Belt or even to the 550 AU location, where the Suns gravitational lens focuses can be considered. The PPR enables a whole new era in space exploration.

The NIAC Phase I study focused on a large, heavily shielded ship to transport humans and cargo to Mars for the development of a Martian base. The main topics included: assessing the neutronics of the system, designing the spacecraft, power system, and necessary subsystems, analyzing the magnetic nozzle capabilities, and determining trajectories and benefits of the PPR. Phase II will build upon these assessments and further the PPR concept.

In Phase II, we plan to:

Read more:

Mars in a Flash: How Pulsed Plasma Rockets Are Revolutionizing Space Travel - SciTechDaily

Ed Dwight celebrates after landing back on Earth following Sunday morning's ten-minute flight to space. Blue Origin via X

More than 60 years after he became the United States first Black astronaut candidate, Ed Dwight finally flew to space.

On Sunday, Blue Origins New Shepard rocket carried six people to and from the Krmn linethe boundary 62 miles above Earths surface where the atmosphere ends and space begins. Dwight, a former Air Force captain, was among the crew. President John F. Kennedy selected him as an astronaut candidate in 1961, but Dwight was never admitted to NASAs astronaut training program and had never been to space.

After stepping out of the capsule last weekend upon his return to Earth, the 90-year-old Dwight lifted both arms over his head in celebration.

Fantastic! A life-changing experience. Everyone needs to do this! he said, per NPRs Scott Neuman. I didnt know I needed this in my life, but now I need it in my life.

Dwight was born in 1933 Kansas City, Kansas. He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953, completed pilot training and served as a military fighter pilot, according to his personal website. In 1957, heearned a degree in aeronautical engineering from Arizona State University.

As part of his preparation for becoming an astronaut, Dwight completed the experimental test pilot course and aerospace research pilot training and performed duties as an aerospace research pilot, per his website. Though the Air Force recommended him for astronaut training with NASA, he was not selected, per the Washington Posts Christian Davenport.

Dwight left the military in 1966 and had a wide-ranging career: He worked for IBM, developed a restaurant chain and founded a real estate company. He later became a sculptor, creating bronzes of important Black figures in American history, including pioneers in the American West and famous jazz musicians. His sculptures are installed in museums across the country.

Sunday, Dwight joined five other people on the New Shepard rockets trip to space: Mason Angel, the founder of a venture capital fund; Sylvain Chiron, the founder of a craft brewery in France; Kenneth L. Hess, a software engineer and entrepreneur; Gopi Thotakura, a pilot and aviator; and Carol Schaller, a retired accountant who has been traveling the world since being told by her doctor in 2017 that she will go blind.

The launch marked the seventh time Blue Origin has carried tourists to space on one of its rockets. It has now transported 37 people in total on trips beyond the Krmn line, where they experience weightlessness and overhead views of Earth on roughly 11-minute flights.

Blue Origin conducted 16 test flights of its New Shepard rocket, which concluded in 2021. The first crewed flight launched on July 20, 2021, with four people on boardincluding Jeff Bezos, the companys founder. Sundays launch was Blue Origins first tourism flight since an uncrewed rockets engine failed during a flight a year and a half ago, per the Washington Post.

The recent flight launched from Texas at 9:35 a.m. local time on Sunday, and the capsule delivered the travelers back to Earth at 9:45 a.m., per the New York Times Amanda Holpuch.

New Shepard is fully autonomous, meaning it has no pilot. The capsule landed with only two of its three parachutes deployed, but it has been designed to safely land with only one parachute if necessary, per the Blue Origin website.

Dwight is now the oldest person to ever travel to space, surpassing the actor William Shatner, who also flew on a New Shepard rocket in 2021.

Youve waited a long time for this opportunity and all of us who stand on your shoulders could not be happier, Charles Bolden, the first Black NASA administrator, says to ABC News Nadine El-Bawab and Bill Hutchinson in a message to Dwight before the flight launched. I know how much you have dreamed about this, and I want you to take some time while you are flying to suck it all up and take it all in. You deserve every moment of this. Youve been a role model and mentor for many of us for so long, and were with you there in spirit.

Dwight tells NPR that he wants to go to space again. I want to go into orbit. I want to go around the Earth and see the whole Earth.

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Read this article:

Ed Dwight, the First Black Astronaut Candidate in the U.S., Finally Travels to Space at 90 Years Old - Smithsonian Magazine

Dwight was on Blue Origins latest crewed space flight on May 19, decades after he was selected as the nation's first Black astronaut candidate

Facebook

Ed Dwight, the United States first-ever Black astronaut candidate, has finally traveled to space and is now the oldest man to do so.

Dwight was one of six individuals aboard Blue Origins seventh human space flight on Sunday, May 19, according to a news release from Jeff Bezos' aerospace company.

The 90-year-old was a member of the 1963 class of astronauts, which also included Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, per the Associated Press.

But despite being selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 as the nations first Black astronaut candidate, Blue Origin said Dwight never had the opportunity to venture into space until now.

Related: Lauren Snchez Says Her All-Female Space Crew Will Be Announced Soon: 'My Fellow Astronauts' (Exclusive)

Sundays flight to space took off for its first flight in two years around 10:37 a.m. local time from west Texas, according to The Guardian.

Facebook

Footage from the flight, shared by Blue Origin, showed the seven-person crew in awe as they cruised around the Earth in their spacecraft. Dwight could be seen giggling with glee as he took in the sights around him.

After landing, Dwight called the nearly 10-minute flight a life-changing experience, according to the AP.

Never miss a story sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

I thought I really didnt need this in my life, he explained. But, now, I need it in my life .... I am ecstatic.

Related: Blue Origin Is Replacing Pete Davidson with Company's Rocket Architect on Next Space Flight

Dwight now holds the world record for oldest individual to travel to space, topping Star Trek actor William Shatner by only a few months, per the AP and NPR.

According to the AP, Guion Bluford became the first African American to visit space in 1983 about five years after NASA began selecting Black astronauts in 1978.

This was Blue Origins first crewed flight to space since 2022, when the New Shepard rocket was grounded following an in-flight failure, according to the AP and The Guardian.

Related: All About Jeff Bezos' Space-Themed Bar at His West Texas Ranch

Also aboard Sundays flight were venture capitalist Mason Angel, entrepreneur Kenneth Hess, aviator Gopi Thotakura, retired accountant Carol Schaller and Sylvain Chiron, the founder of a French craft brewery, Blue Origin and NPR reported.

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!

New Shepard has now flown 37 people into space, according to Blue Origin.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.

Here is the original post:

Ed Dwight, America's First Black Astronaut Candidate, Makes History by Finally Reaching Space at 90 - Yahoo New Zealand News

Ed Dwight was named a candidate for NASAs astronaut corps by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. On Sunday, he finally made it to space.

Dwight, 90, traveled to space aboard a capsule with Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos. The flight departed from West Texas and lasted about 10 minutes, according to theAssociated Press.He was one of six passengers to make the journey on Sunday.

I thought I reallydidnt need this in my life,Dwight said after the flight. But, now, I need it in my life. I am ecstatic.

Dwight became the new record-holder for the oldest person ever to travel to space. He is about two months older than actor William Shatner, who previously set the record in 2021 during his space flight.

His journey to get to space spanned over seven decades.

Dwight enlisted in the Air Force in 1953 and eventuallyearned the rank of captainafter several years of service. After not being selected by NASA as an astronaut, he remained in the Air Force until 1966. Later, Dwight worked as an engineer, real estate, and business owner before becoming a renowned sculptor.

While Dwight was nominated in 1963 to be in the Astronaut Corps, it wasnt until 1978 that the first black astronaut was accepted into NASA. Five years later, in 1983, Guion Bluford became the first black astronaut to travel to space aboard the Space ShuttleChallenger.

In 2020, Dwight was named an honorary memberof the Space Force.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The Blue Origin flight into space marks a comeback of sorts for Bezoss company. It was the first flight into space with a crew in almost two years. Previously, Blue Origin grounded all its flightsafter an accident in 2022in which engine trouble caused an unmanned capsule to come apart in the sky in midflight.

Blue Origins commercial flight into space on Sunday was the companys seventh journey with passengers.

Link:

After 60 years, the countrys first black astronaut candidate gets to travel to space - Washington Examiner

On Sunday, Dwight will join five others on a space flight by Blue Origin.

Ed Dwight, who is the first Black man to be trained as an astronaut, is set to become the oldest person to go to space at 90 years of age. Dwight in 1961 hoped to become the first Black astronaut in space, but he never made it.

A Blue Origin flight is finally giving the 90-year-old the chance that he was denied decades ago.

On Sunday, Dwight will join five others on a space flight by Blue Origin, the space travel company owned by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.The 11-minute flight will take the six members to the edge of space, helping them experience weightlessness due to zero gravity and view the Earth's horizon.

In 1961, Dwight was selected by then US President John F. Kennedy to enter an Air Force training program, known as the Path to NASA's Astronaut Corps. Dwight was an elite test pilot at that time, but was ultimately not picked.

In 2022,Dwight revealed that when he got the offer letter in 1961 to be the first Black astronaut, he thought"these dudes were crazy.

After the completion of the program in 1963, the Air Force recommended him to join the corps. However, he wasn't selected. In 1966, he resigned from the military citing strain of racial politics.

"So, all these White folks that I'm dealing with, I mean, my peers, the other guys that were astronaut candidates and the leadership was just horrified at the idea of my coming down to Edwards and the president appointing me to the position, CBS quoted him as saying.

He dedicated the rest of his life to telling Black history through sculpture. Dwight's art, displayed around the country, includes iconic figures like Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and more.

Dwight's seat on the Blue Origin flight is believed to cost $250,000 even though the ticket prices are a well-guarded secret. His ticket has been sponsored by the nonprofit organisation, Space for Humanity, known for providing help to send citizens to space.

Link:

Meet Ed Dwight, First Black Man Trained As Astronaut To Go To Space After 63 Years - NDTV

Blue Origin announced that it will be launching a rocket this Sunday, ending a nearly two-year drought. The space tourism firm hasnt held a crewed suborbital mission since its NS-22 flight in August 2022. A month after that event, during an uncrewed flight, its New Shepard spacecraft disengaged itself from the rocket mid-flight. The capsule parachuted safely back to Earth.

A thermo-structural failure on the rockets BE-3PM engine nozzle was blamed for the malfunction. After 15 months, Blue Origin returned in December 2023 with its uncrewed NS-24 mission.

The company is offering both research and space-tourism suborbital missions that fly to about 100 kilometers above the Earth to the Karman line, which many scientists call the edge of space. At that point, the crew experiences a few minutes of weightlessness before the capsule drops back to the companys launch facility in Van Horn, Texas. The flight and space experience lasts about 10 minutes.

This missions crew is as eclectic as previous flights. It includes Ed Dwight, 90, who in 1961 became the U.S.s first-ever black astronaut candidate; venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, the founder of French craft brewery Brasserie Mont Blanc; entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; and pilot and aviator Gopi Thotakura.

Blue Origins resumption of commercial flightsrumored to cost anywhere between $200,000 and the $28 million one civilian astronaut supposedly paid for the initial flightmeans the space race between Jeff Bezoss company and Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic is finally getting serious.

Sort of.

Virgin Galactic says it will be launching its seventh commercial flight aboard its supersonic aircraft VSS Unity on June 7. Unity will be tethered to a larger mothership, Eve. The two aircraft take off together and separate at 45,000 feet, at which point Unity heads skywards. This would be Virgin Atlantics seventh space-tourism flight after it officially launched its commercial flight program last year. It flew an earlier mission on January 26.

June 7s full crew roster has yet to be released, though Turkish astronaut Tuva Atasever will be on the flight doing suborbital research, according to Axiom Space, a company that has facilitated trips for other scientists to the International Space Station. The other space tourists on the June 7 flight will include two Americans and an Italian.

But there wont be the highly anticipated leapfrogging between Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin that observers expected after Branson and Bezos both flew in their respective spacecraft in the summer of 2021.

Junes flight will be the last for VSS Unity, effectively mothballing Virgin Galactics commercial program until 2026. The company is developing two new Delta-class spaceplanes which, if all goes according to plan, should be doing hundreds of suborbital flights, as opposed to a half-dozen, in two years. Virgin Galactic plans to fly 125 flights per year going forward, putting 750 tourists (a seat on the aircraft now costs $450,000) into space. At that point, the company Branson founded 20 years ago will be making money for the first time.

Several weeks ago, SpaceX seemed to officially declare itself open for space tourism business by adding a page to its website that described four missions that citizen astronauts could sign up for, even including an email address humanspaceflight@spacex.com. (But the Join a Mission button on the page goes nowhere.) The company has accommodated private civilian missions before, but this is the first time SpaceX has floated the possibility to the public.

Elon Musks company, which went from plucky startup to the dominant force in commercial space transport, showed diagrams of its two spaceship types, the Dragon and much larger Starship, also noting four possible missions. They include a three- to six-day Earth orbit later this year aboard the Dragon. A 10-day trip for four to the International Space Station will be available as early as 2025.

The 7-day moon mission, 240,000 miles from Earth, doesnt have a launch date yet. But the website noted it could carry up to 12 passengers in their own suites, presumably aboard Starship. The flight to Mars would involve traveling 140 million miles away from the planet. It didnt give any information about costs or dates, though it did note that gravity on Mars is 38 percent of that of Earths, and a day there is 24 hours, 37 minutes.

Three years ago, many observers forecasted the race to space among the three billionaires would be a slugfest at this point, but technical failures and modifications for all three have tempered expectations, showing that space travel will not be as seamless as proponents expected.

Still, Sundays projected flight shows that the race is still on. It just may be more marathon than sprint between the three space-tourism companies.

Originally posted here:

The Billionaire Space Race Heats Up With Blue Origin's Latest Launch - Robb Report