Category Archives: Space Exploration

Each project will receive funding to support development over the next 2 years before hopefully being ready for use in missions.

NASA is full of brilliant minds attempting to solve all the problems that stand in the way of exploring deep space, visiting Mars, and maybe one day even living on other planets. But there's only so much time in the day and so many people the agency can employ, so NASA also runs the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

Through SBIR, NASA is able to select and help fund research and development of innovative technologies by small businesses that could ultimately benefit the agency. And 133 of those projects from 112 businesses have just been selected to receive Phase II SBIR funding, thought to be worth in the region of $100 million.

The SBIR program consists of three phases. Phase I establishes the feasibility of an idea over the course of six months with up to $125,000 of funding. Phase II allows Phase I projects to be further developed over the course of two years with up to $750,000 of funding. Phase III sees successful Phase II projects commercialized and funding provided from sources outside of the SBIR program.

These 133 selected projects made it through the Phase I feasibility process and now have a real chance to be turned into commercial products. Projects highlighted by NASA from those selected to receive Phase II funding include:

As the lightweight materials technology highlighted above demonstrates, although these projects are focused on benefiting NASA, they also hold the potential to improve other on-Earth industries such as aircraft design.

With Phase II projects receiving two years of support, we'll now have to wait until 2019 to find out how many of the 133 make it and get turned into commercial and space-ready products.

Matthew is PCMag's UK-based editor and news reporter. Prior to joining the team, he spent 14 years writing and editing content on our sister site Geek.com and has covered most areas of technology, but is especially passionate about games tech. Alongside PCMag, he's a freelance video game designer. Matthew holds a BSc degree in Computer Science from Birmingham University and a Masters in Computer Games Development from Abertay University. More

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NASA Funds 133 Projects to Aid Deep Space Exploration - PC Magazine

One of the tasks that President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpHow Barack Obama ruined NASA space exploration Poll: More than half say Sessions should resign Why a Russia probe may make the left squirm, too, not just the right MORE has before him, along with revamping immigration and trade, repealing and replacing ObamaCare, and rebuilding the military, is restoring Americas space exploration program to its former glory. Press reports suggest that the administration is looking at an early return to the moon, using commercial partnerships.

To understand the task that the president and whomever he chooses as NASA administrator have before them, it is useful to look back on how profoundly and adroitly President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaHow Barack Obama ruined NASA space exploration Senators want warrants, court orders for any Trump wiretapping DHS nominee open to virtual wall MORE crippled the space agencys efforts to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. When Obama came into office, he did what a number of other presidents have done to determine their goals for NASA: he formed a presidential commission to study the space agency and come up with some recommendations.

The Augustine Commission, so named after its chairman former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, returned with a set of recommendations some months later. The commission found that the program then in existence, Project Constellation, was not executable under any reasonable budget. The program, started by President George W. Bush, had been underfunded and had faced technical challenges for years. The commissions offered two alternatives. The first was Moon First, which would have focused Americas efforts on a return to the moon. The second was Flexible Path, which would have sent American astronauts to every destination besides the moonthe asteroids, the moons of Mars, and so on. Both options would lead to the holy grail of space exploration enthusiasts, a mission to Mars.

The kicker was that both options would cost an extra $3 billion a year for NASA to execute. For the Obama administration, which was not shy about spending money in areas that it cared about, this price tag was too dear to bear.

The governments response was formulated in secret. The results of these private deliberations were rolled out in the 2011 budget request that was released in February 2010.Project Constellation would be canceled, root and branch. Instead, NASA would conduct studies of heavy-lift rockets, deep-space propulsion, and other technologies that it was said, in the fullness of time, would make exploring space cheaper and easier.

Congress, which had not been consulted, reacted with bipartisan fury. The Obama administration made two critical errors. It had not consulted with Congress or anyone else when it developed its plans to kill Constellation. The White House also blatantly pulled a bureaucratic dodge that was apparent even to a first-term member of the House from the sticks. To kill a popular program, one studies it to death. Nowhere in the Obama plan was there a commitment to send astronauts anywhere. Clearly, the White House had no intention of doing space exploration. President Obama had expressed an antipathy to American exceptionalism, and nothing speaks to that quality than American astronauts exploring other worlds.

When Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, Gene Cernan, the last man on the Moon, and Jim Lovell, the hero of Apollo 13,sent an open lettercondemning the cancellation of Constellation, President Obama knew he had a problem on his hands. So, with Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin in tow as a political prop, Obama went down to the Kennedy Space Center to makehis big space announcement. We would go to Mars, sometime in the next 30 years and visit an Earth-approaching asteroid before that. We would not go back to the moon because we had already been there.

Of course, Obama was no more interested in exploring space than he was before. The Journey to Mars, as NASA eventually called it, was set so far into the future, the mid-2030s, as to be meaningless. Mars was the bright, shiny object to distract people from the vacuous nature of Obamas space policy.

Congress mandated the development of the Orion spacecraft and the heavy-lift Space Launch System, with designs meticulously spelled out to deny NASA any wiggle room to play slow walk games. These bits of hardware will be available around the end of the decade along with commercial vehicles.

Obama wasted eight years that might have been spent getting Americans beyond low Earth orbit. The Journey to Mars has been the ObamaCare of space exploration--expensive, unsustainable, and not designed to do what it is alleged to do. Part of the mandate of the current president to make America great again will be to turn that situation around and America back toward the stars.

Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has just published a political study of space exploration entitledWhy is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?He blogs atCurmudgeons Corner.Follow him at@MarkWhittington

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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How Barack Obama ruined NASA space exploration - The Hill (blog)

U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet pose for pictures during a press conference at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome on Nov. 16.

Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images

Greetings, Future Tensers,

Nothing gets me in the spirit of International Womans Day quite like reading two accomplished female leaders on the future of space exploration. Lindy Elkins-Tanton, director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and Ellen Stofan, the former chief scientist of NASA, continue our March Futurography unit on the New Space Race by exploring the role of competition and collaboration in space endeavors. Elkins-Tanton writes that the purpose of space exploration is more than just scientific discoveryits about inspiration. She warns that if India or China beats the U.S. to Mars, it would be akin to a military defeat. Stofan says that we wont get to our next big space milestone without international collaboration, writing, When you are exploring space, going it alone has never been, and will never be, an option.

On a more terrestrial note, WikiLeaks has released thousands of new documents detailing the CIAs hacking capabilities. The document dump shows the CIAs ability to hack smartphones, computers, and smart TVsnot just your AOL email accounts. (Im looking at you, Vice President Pence.)

Other things we read this week while testing our reading comprehension before trolling the comments section:

Sent from my iPhone, Emily Fritcke For Future Tense

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.

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Future Tense Newsletter: Space Exploration Isn't Just About Scientific Discovery - Slate Magazine (blog)

Artwork of the Mars Rover leaving its lander.

NASA

On Wednesday, March 8, Future Tensea partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State Universitywill host an event in Washington called Will Collaboration or Competition Propel Humans to Mars and Beyond? For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

When young Charles Darwin stepped onto the Beagle, he wasnt planning to gather data for science, eventually changing the way humans view life. He had been a mediocre student in school and simply was hired on to be the gentleman companion of the captain. The main purpose of the Beagles voyage was to survey and produce better maps for trade.

Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, and everyone else who tried to find the Indies were doing so for trade and national expansion. Sure, they stumbled upon parts of North America and a lot of other handy things and places along the way, but those discoveries were accidents. Sir Francis Drake, John Cabot, and everyone else who tried to find the Northwest Passage were also doing so for trade and national expansion. They also discovered a lot of science along the way, but not by primary purpose.

We often connect exploration with discovery; unexplored wilderness; new understanding; data; and, of course, science. But science has seldom been the motivator for exploration. Science has been an add-on until very recently, when inquiry and wealth and an interesting twist in perception has made science appear to lead expeditions, at least in space. All our robotic missions beyond our planet appear to be motivated by scientific discovery. We plan our mission to Europa to discover whether life has arisen there. We send rovers to Mars to look for water and the potential for life. We seek scientific answers.

At core, robotic space exploration is more for inspiration than it is for science. Orbiters, landers, and rovers inspire people to dream and to take bigger steps in their own lives. More practically, robotic missions are preparation for human missions. We Americans pay for NASA willingly because we are inspired and proud of our national achievements and technological wonders.

And although robotic space exploration is inspiring, human space exploration is far more personal, far more narrative, filled with more relatable challenge and risk. Human space exploration is a way for nations to flex their muscles and compete without having to resort to war. Its our substitute for mutual assured destruction, and that has not changed since the Cold War. (Thankfully, it is an uplifting and constructive substitute.)

Why Are India, Luxembourg, and Other Countries Getting Into the Space Race?

Your Cheat-Sheet Guide to the New Space Race

When Youre Exploring Space, Going It Alone Isnt an Option

If India or China Beats the U.S. to Mars, It Will Feel Like a Military Defeat

Americans have been thrilled by our Apollo successes. For 47 years, we have been the only nation to put a person on another celestial body, and we have been resting on that glory all that time. But that is about to change. The Chinese have an ambitious, progressive plan for landers, humans, and finally a colony on the moon. Multiple private companies, from the United States, India, and elsewhere, have lunar plans. What is going to happen to the American psyche when the Chinese, the Indians, and the European Union put people on the moon, and we are no longer the only ones? How will we react if other nations beat us to Mars?

After the Apollo era, we let the technology that enabled travel to the moon go out of production, in particular the Saturn V, the huge rocket needed to lift the big loads. Not until 2004 did that change, when President Bush announced we were going back to the moon, as a stepping stone for Mars. We began to build the Ares I and V rockets to enable those big launches. But then that program, in whole called Constellation, was canceled in 2010.

Next, also in 2010, the NASA Authorization Act laid out a plan to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s. NASA, the science community, and the aerospace engineering powerhouses jumped on this new vision and began work. The graphic designers outdid themselves with inspirational timelines and visions of transport and habitation.

And now the Trump administration says we are going back to the moon perhaps helped by some increasingly influential and inspirational private companies, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Orbital, Blue Origin, Bigelow, and the like.

But wait! Where are we going? The moon, asteroids, Mars, space stations? What are we really striving for? If we cant commit to one human exploration target in our solar system, then we must conclude that there is no single overriding purpose compelling humanity to reach one celestial target over another. Yet we feel compelled. Science, clearly, is not the driving impulse. Not even commerce is driving it, despite speculation about riches in asteroids.

Having no consistent target means that the going is the point, not the getting there. And if making the journey itself is the point, then the purpose is showing courage and innovation and being first and fastest and bestin short, its a competition. Human space exploration is about national greatness as compared to other nations. Were still firmly in the Cold War mindset.

When other countries succeed, then, rather than joining together in a positive view of human progress, we will feel that we have failed, and we may be angry and bitterand dangerous.

One concrete solution is not to fail, that we as a nation need to go to the moon and to Mars.

And another solution is to collaborate. Imagine the Americans, from NASA and SpaceX and other private organizations, and the Chinese, and the Indians, and the Russians, and the European Union, are all living in nonstandardized modules at some safe distance from one another on Mars. Would they want to stay apart in such an extreme environment, or would they want to communicate and collaborate (even if thats not the case back on Earth)?

Lets not just hope for collaboration. Lets take more and better steps now to create and foster a space collaboration. We can make private-public space partnerships easier, including those that cross national borders. We can work harder at the international meetings on space topics to create multinational collaborative bodies. We can work harder at developing globally beneficial international standards.

Exploration started out about nations and wealth. Space exploration could be about moreit could be about our species. When we go to Marsit will happenlets make sure it is a step deeper into human civilization as we do it.

This article is part of the new space race installment of Futurography, a series in which Future Tense introduces readers to the technologies that will define tomorrow. Each month, well choose a new technology and break it down. Future Tense is a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate.

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If India or China Beats the US to Mars, It Will Feel Like a Military Defeat - Slate Magazine

Members of the Expedition 50 crew aboard the International Space Station celebrated the 2016 holidays together with a festive meal, among them NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

NASA

On Wednesday, Future Tensea partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State Universitywill host an event in Washington called Will Collaboration or Competition Propel Humans to Mars and Beyond? For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

The next NASA rover to Mars will launch in 2020. It will be built in the United States, and it will measure wind with a tool from Spain, study rock chemistry with an instrument partially built by the French, and examine the subsurface with a sounder from Finland. This kind of international mashup is actually fairly typical for space missions, which are typically composed of scientists and instruments from countries all over the world.

Partnerships with international space agencies have always been key to NASAs success. (Little-known fact: The first flag deployed on the moon was that of Switzerland, as part of a solar wind experiment with Apollo 11.) When you are exploring space, going it alone has never been, and will never be, an option.

When you are exploring space, going it alone has never been, and will never be, an option.

When it comes to peering outside our solar system, the partnerships continue. The stunning recent announcement of a seven-planet system around the star TRAPPIST-1, a mere 39.5 light-years away from Earth, involved a multinational team and telescopes, both in space and on the ground. A Belgian astronomer originally discovered some of the planets using a telescope in Chile, then further observations with the Paranal telescope in Chile and NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope confirmed the seven-planet system. Three of the planets are located in the habitable zone, where liquid water, critical for life, could be stable on the surface.

The flagship example of partnerships in space is literally the flagship: the International Space Station. The U.S., Russian, Japanese, Canadian, and European space agencies have been operating this amazing orbiting laboratory for more than 16 years, continuously human tended. The astronauts have come from 18 different nations, and experiments from 93 countries have been carried out on the ISS. Every day, astronauts on the International Space Station carry out research that will enable humans to travel to Mars and back. In the microgravity environment of space, our bones lose density, our muscles waste, our cardiovascular system undergoes change. Research carried out on the ISS is helping us develop ways to mitigate these human health effects, which will make it possible for humans to arrive at Mars, after a seven- to eight-month journey, healthy and ready to cope with any potential emergency.

Why Are India, Luxembourg, and Other Countries Getting Into the Space Race?

Your Cheat-Sheet Guide to the New Space Race

When Youre Exploring Space, Going It Alone Isnt an Option

If India or China Beats the U.S. to Mars, It Will Feel Like a Military Defeat

The International Space Exploration Coordination Group comprises 14 space agencies, including the expected bodies like NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Russian space agency. But it also involves space agencies from China, India, South Korea, and Ukraine. The group has produced a road map for human exploration beyond Earth and provides a forum for space agencies to coordinate efforts. While some nations are more focused on the Moon and some on Mars, all realize that no single agency is capable of such a large undertaking alone.

In addition to multilateral efforts like ISECG, NASA has bilateral cooperation with individual space agencies. For instance, the European Space Agency is providing the service module for the Orion capsule that will fly on the Space Launch System rocket to take humans beyond low Earth orbit. The first uncrewed test flight was to be in 2018, but NASA is now investigating how soon it could conduct the first test flight of SLS and Orion with a crew onboard.

The only space agency NASA cannot have bilateral agreements with is China, thanks to U.S. law. The Chinese space agency does work closely with most of NASAs foreign partner space agencies, and the previous NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, spoke publicly about his frustration with the policy. At a public forum with other space agencies in 2015, he stated, If we are not collaborating with everybody, well be on the outside looking in.

One of the chief barriers to international cooperation between space agencies is the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Some space technologies are covered under these regulations, which were put in place to prevent the export of weapons systems and related technologies. U.S. companies that sell launch services or satellites have complained about the restrictions, which they feel cause them to lose business to international competitors. Even NASA has come under scrutiny for possible ITAR violations. The ITAR restrictions are confusing and seem overly broad, making it more difficult to set up cooperation with international scientists on missions. The ITAR regulations are set up under U.S. law, making it ultimately the responsibility of Congress to decide how much to loosen or tighten the restrictions. Despite these challenges, when it comes to overall goals in exploration, NASA will lead, in part because its budget far exceeds the budgets of its partner space agencies.

While the head of the European Space Agency has called for a moon village to be the exploration priority, NASA continues to set its sights on Mars, with a plan for the first crewed mission to Mars in the early 2030s. NASA does plan to put the precursor for a Mars transfer vehicle in orbit around the Moon in the mid-2020s, providing a stepping stone for international or commercial partners that want to venture down to the lunar surface. But Mars remains the priority goal, with the first orbital mission followed by astronauts to the surface in the late 2030s, to search for evidence of past life on Mars. The private sector will play a key role in this venture, with SpaceX planning to send an uncrewed Dragon capsule to the Martian surface in 2018 in partnership with NASA. SpaceXs capability to land its first-stage rocket boosters back on Earth is helping them to develop the needed entry, descent, and landing capabilities for Mars.

Observing this planet is also a closely coordinated effort. The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites and the Group on Earth Observations provide forums for space agencies or offices from around the world to discuss open data policies, coordinate observations, inter-calibrate instruments, and allow data comparison and validation. These coordination efforts are becoming even more critical, as we cope with changing weather and patterns of growing food, and sea level rise due to human-caused climate change. There can be more immediate payoffs, too, particularly when it comes to disasters. During humanitarian crises and natural disasters, the space agencies (more than 15 of them right now) with Earth-observing satellites that have signed the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters can shift their focus and prioritize processing of satellite data to aid rescue and recovery efforts.

While people often think of space exploration as a way to promote national pride, the truth is that the future of space is international. These partnerships are expanding our knowledge of the universe, helping us search for life on other worlds, making critical observations of our own planet, and moving humans outward into space in a much more rapid time frame, and more comprehensively, than would be possible otherwise. In addition, innovations in technology and science are not restricted to one country. Diverse, innovative teams solve problems, and no one country or company can go it alone when it comes to the final frontier of space.

This article is part of the new space race installment of Futurography, a series in which Future Tense introduces readers to the technologies that will define tomorrow. Each month, well choose a new technology and break it down. Future Tense is a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate.

Read more from the original source:

When We Explore Space, We Go Together - Slate Magazine

The burgeoning space-transportation company owned by Amazon.com chairman JeffBezosthis week is expected to announce some customers and new initiatives, the latest step toward its long-term goal of building rockets powerful enough to penetrate deep into the solar system, according to industry officials.

The moves by the typically secretive Mr.Bezos, these officials said, are anticipated to disclose further details about Blue Origin LLC's strategy to create a family of reusable rockets initially intended to take tourists on suborbital voyages, and then propel spacecraft into Earth's orbit and eventually blast both manned and robotic missions to the Moon and various planets.

Plans for heavy-lift boosters previously unveiled by Mr.Bezos, including one version roughly half as powerful as the iconic Saturn V rockets that lifted Apollo astronauts to the moon, ultimately could emerge as rivals with powerful rockets already under development by fellow billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is working on its own version of a deep-space booster and capsule.

The initial test flight of SpaceX's long-delayed Falcon Heavy, which would become the world's most potent operational rocket, is scheduled for later this year. NASA's much larger booster, called SLS, is slated for its maiden flight in 2018.

So far, Mr.Bezoshas been less specific about timetables to demonstrate the reliability of his emerging heavy-lift rocket variant, called New Glenn, after the late astronaut and U.S. senator, John Glenn. Amazon's founder has been even less specific about a next-generation rocket on the drawing board, dubbed New Armstrong, in memory of the late astronaut Neil Armstrong, who was the first man to set foot on the Moon. That booster is intended for travel deep into the solar system.

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Both self-described "space geeks" with ambitious visions of helping humans establish large-scale settlements beyond Earth in their lifetimes, Messrs.Bezosand Musk have jousted good-naturedly on social media in the past about competing to land the first spent booster vertically back on Earth. Mr.Bezosdid it first after a suborbital mission, but Mr. Musk accomplished the feat by landing the main portion of a Falcon 9 rocket that delivered a payload into orbit.

For the first time, Blue Origin in the next few days is expected to make public specific customers, according to industry officials. A series of announcements and postings on Twitter is slated to follow a separate flurry of news reports last week about Blue Origin's bid for NASA's support to ship experiments, cargo and other hardware to the moon with the aim of setting up a permanent settlement there.

The proposal, which hasn't been acted on by the agency, was first reported by the Washington Post, which is controlled by Mr.Bezos.

Last-minute shifts could change Blue Origin's plans for the coming days, and Mr.Bezosis renowned for teasing the media with broad concepts, often without providing subsequent details. He is scheduled to speak Tuesday morning in the prominent leadoff slot at an international satellite conference in Washington.

The appearance also comes in the wake of Mr. Musk prompting headlines last week with a proposal to fly two fare-paying passengers on an automated trip around the moon by 2018.

Traditional and startup U.S. space companies are maneuvering to take advantage of the principle of public-private partnerships to accelerate manned exploration favored by President Donald Trump's administration.

With a few exceptions, Mr.Bezoshas opted to run Blue Origin since its founding at the beginning of the last decade behind a strict veil of secrecy -- and without seeking substantial federal contracts or development funding.

Last September, Mr.Bezosrocked the international aerospace community by disclosing that his New Glenn rocket would feature a cluster of seven main engines and stand more than 310 feet tall. If it flies by the end of the decade as intended, the largest version of the proposed booster could vie for commercial and military satellite launches with SpaceX, Europe's premier launch provider Arianespace and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp.

Over the years, Mr.Bezoshas stressed the importance of creating reusable technology able to slash transportation costs by operating much more frequently than today's rockets. He also has talked about his long-term vision of "millions of people living and working in space."

Unlike Mr. Musk, who relishes making a steady stream of splashy announcements setting increasingly aggressive goals, Mr.Bezosremained virtually silent to outsiders until after Blue Origin pulled off its coup of successfully landing a New Shepard booster back at its West Texas launchpad in late 2015.

The unmanned vehicle flew a suborbital test to 333,000 feet, reached nearly four times the speed of sound, and then both the capsule and its liquid-fueled rocket separately landed safely -- ready for another flight. At the time, Mr.Bezosprojected commercial space-tourism flights could start "sometime in 2017." He also said "full reuse is a game changer" for access to space.

In November 2016, when he disclosed plans for a series of larger rockets with substantially more thrust, Mr.Bezosissued a stark reminder of how different his approach is versus that of Mr. Musk.

Noting "our mascot is the tortoise," Mr.Bezossaid "deliberate and methodical wins the day, and you do things quickest by never skipping steps."

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

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Amazon Chief Bezos Expected to Unveil Further Private Space Exploration Plans - Fox Business

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Jeff Bezos Expected to Unveil Further Plans for Private Space Exploration Wall Street Journal (subscription) The burgeoning space-transportation company owned by Amazon.com Inc. chairman Jeff Bezos this week is expected to announce some customers and new initiatives, the latest step toward its long-term goal of building rockets powerful enough to penetrate ... Reach for the stars! But do it without the governmentConservative Review The Trump administration has unleashed a lunar gold rushArs Technica Elon Musk's urgent moonshotHouston Chronicle GeekWire -Daytona Beach News-Journal -Indiana Daily Student all 218 news articles »

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Jeff Bezos Expected to Unveil Further Plans for Private Space Exploration - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

ARLINGTON Instructors use some fun ways to teach Earth-based sciences that bring out the natural curiosity in students.

But take those same fields of inquiry into orbit, then let student groups build a tabletop Mars colony project, and their imagination takes flight. After all, the basic science principles are the same whether you apply and test them here on terra firma, or in space. Space is just pun intended cooler.

Two Arlington science teachers are over the moon after attending the Space Exploration Educators Conference at Houston Space Center. They returned with a galaxy of ideas sure to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers among their students.

Rachel Harrington, sixth-grade science and seventh-grade math teacher at Haller Middle School, and Angie Kyle, a seventh- and eighth-grade STEM teacher at Post Middle School, said the resources they gained were amazing.

It ignites the passion you had when you were a first-year teacher, and thats enough to move mountains with these kids, Harrington said. Youre excited and thrilled to bring this back and inspire kids to do something bigger than their wildest dreams.

Moreover, she added, Youre surrounded by other like-minded educators who also want to inspire future leaders.

Educators from around the globe participated in the annual event at NASAs Johnson Space Center and Space Center Houston for three days in February. The conference welcomed teachers from 41 states and nine countries, including Canada, India, Japan and the Philippines.

The conference included seminars, hands-on activities, tours and guest speakers. The hosts used space exploration initiatives and the latest information about the International Space Program to boost teachers skills in presenting science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, lessons, in ways that inspire students.

Both Kyle and Harrington have found over time that whenever space science is part of the lesson plan, it gets the students attention.

All the science conducted on the International Space Station connects to all the science we do in middle school, whether growing plants or looking at the impacts of how human systems respond in different environments, Kyle said.

Before Kyle left for the conference to be a pretend astronaut, the class talked about getting a greenhouse. Classroom budgets being tight, she encouraged students to come up with their own proposal. When she returned, the students came up with three inexpensive proposals that used PVC pipe and tarps they just might have a greenhouse before the school-year ends.

For both teachers, this was their first trip the Houston Space Center, but Harrington attended a Honeywell space conference a couple of years ago.

While at the conference, they saw Historic Mission Control Center as well as the space stations flight control room, including stories of what happened during the Apollo days. They also touched moon rocks. Space Center Houston has the worlds largest collection for public view, and more than 400 space artifacts. Their teacher team also successfully designed a Mars rover with mouse traps.

They took their turn in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, an astronaut training facility operated by NASA near the Johnson Space Center. Their team performed simulated tasks in preparation for an upcoming mission, wearing suits designed to provide neutral buoyancy to simulate the microgravity that astronauts feel during space flight.

A highlight of the visit was meeting astronaut Nicole Stott, a keynote speaker who talked about art in space education. Stott said when growing up nobody told her she could be an astronaut. She went ahead and did it anyway, becoming an engineer first.

Matt Green, James Webb Space Telescope senior staff project scientist, gave a mind-bending presentation on the design and construction of the scope scheduled for completion in 2018. The telescope is expected to see galaxies formed 13.5 billion years ago, at the point when stars and galaxies began to form.

While in Houston, they were able to meet with the planning lead on the NASA Orion Mission, the next generation spacecraft that will carry astronauts to an asteroid, Mars and eventually deep space. Harrington had arranged for her students previously to talk with that person via Skype. She had time to meet with Harrington and Kyle at the conference, but was on her way to meet with the European Space Agency about the project.

A challenging workshop that Harrington and Kyle attended was one that involved working to design a heat shield from common materials. This was an activity the teachers were able to bring back as a classroom assignment, using materials to protect an egg from a blow torch.

The teachers have more experiments in store. For example, studying slingshot maneuvers around a planet, using magnets to mimic gravity. Designing a better space toilet, and creating a urine purification system to make the fluid potable.

Kids love gross-out science, Kyle said, jokingly.

Growing tomatoes from seeds and observing their growth to learn more about photosynthesis is a common science project. Add a few seeds in the mix that took a ride in the International Space Station and study the differences now thats a science project.

The students wont know which of their seeds are more earthly and which are from the space station until they start observing them once they are planted, Harrington said.

Thats the fun of inquiry for the students. They need to report back to the program the effects of space on plants.

Harrington likes to remind students that learning never ends.

I tell them that you need to do it for yourself, always personally and professionally, she said. I am constantly searching for ways to grow myself. They should be doing that every day, too, outside the confines of these four walls and fifty-three minutes.

Originally posted here:

Teachers attend space exploration conference, bring back lessons out of this world - Arlington Times

Dear Editor,

I welcome the news that the Smithsonian Institution will be sending the Apollo 11 command module Columbia on a four-city tour under the title Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission (Fairfax County Times, The history of space travel encapsulated). Our manned and unmanned space exploration programs have set the pace of discovery for decades and achieved remarkable scientific breakthroughs that continue to have countless practical applications in science, engineering, medicine, and follow-on manned space missions.

Nonetheless, without the site survey of NASAs unmanned Lunar Orbiter program (1966-1967) that identified Tranquility Base where Neil Armstrong landed the Apollo 11 lunar lander, there might not have been so many successful manned missions to the Moons surface. Lunar Orbiter reconnaissance missions identified other landing sites as well, making site selection much more accurate and reliable than Earth-based telescopic imaging could. They made possible subsequent landings in more mountainous areas.

I was an active participant in the Lunar Orbiter and Apollo programs (1967-1970) and researched and wrote a history for the NASA Historians Office. In 1977 NASA Headquarters published my book Destination Moon: A History of the Lunar Orbiter Program (NASA TM X-3487) that is available to read on NASAs website at https://history.nasa.gov/TM-3487.

NASAs Langley Research Center in Langley, Virginia managed the program and had five successful orbital missions for five attempts one of the best records of any unmanned program. Following this success Langley managed the 1976 Mars Viking program using much of the technology and experience from Lunar Orbiter.

In preparing for their missions Apollo astronauts studied the detailed photographs that Lunar Orbiters sent back to Earth. Resolution of lunar surface details through the Orbiters 610mm telephoto camera defined details down to one meter in size. Repeated orbital passes over specific target areas made possible stereoscopic pictures of surface features and landing sites that were used in landing simulations by the astronauts.

On August 23, 1966 Lunar Orbiter I took the very first image of the Earth from orbit above the Moon. On August 8, 1967 Lunar Orbiter V photographed the nearly full Earth from polar orbit. These and thousands of other images of the lunar surface, including the dark side of the Moon gave scientists and the public their first true views of the entire surface of Earths natural satellite.

In recent years the original Lunar Orbiter images have been digitized and cleaned up for use in possible future astronaut missions to the Moon. There has been no other orbital survey of the Moon that offers such high quality detail of its surface features.

Bruce K. Byers

Reston

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Reader applauds space exploration pioneers - Fairfaxtimes.com

By Jake Keeley | 3/1/17 11:23pm

There are many things that I do not understand, but I do not think I am alone when I say that I do not understand the fascination with space. Im sure if we surveyed elementary aged children, one of the most frequent occurring desired occupations would be an astronaut. Aside from a police officer, or a fireman, kids love astronauts. And I cant totally blame them, as I too enjoy spacecrafts. In fact I have designed and engineered over 100 spacecrafts using LEGOs alone.

And certainly I can remember emulating life without gravity as I was taking big, moon-bouncing strides just yesterday. However, I cant help but ask whats next? There are so many unanswered questions that even if we got an answer, Im not sure we would know what to do with it. Is there life other than us? If the answer is yes, how does that change what we do on a day-to-day basis? If the answer is somehow figured out to be a firm no, does that change our approach either?

NASA couldnt care less about what we think because they are moving. After a long hiatus of being in the news, NASA has found themselves in the headlines twice in the past week. Not only did they recently find seven potentially hospitable planets, the movie Hidden Figures, depicting the story of a team of African American women mathematicians who played a major role in the early US space program, was nominated for the best picture award.

Best picture is certainly no small feat, but seven planets is extraordinary. Not only was the finding monumental, the naming was revolutionary as well.

TRAPPIST-1 finally serves as a nod to rapper Future who not only has a mixtape called Astronaut Status, but has also dedicated an entire project to the one time ninth planet from our sun, only to be reclassified as a dwarf planet, Pluto. No, NASA cant convince me that TRAPPIST stands for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, because no one in their right mind would believe that.

After spending what felt like too long roving the planet Mars with nothing really to show for it, it seems like TRAPPIST-1 presents a real opportunity with some genuine traction. NASA suggests that three of the seven planets are within the goldilocks zone, where the temperature is neither too hot to boil off water, or too cold to freeze it.

However, there is still much to be learned about any of the planets, and it is certainly much too soon to speculate on the prospect of life. The best thing about it is that it is essentially a win-win scenario, because even if we determine that the planets are uninhabitable, we have an entirely new set of planets whose aliens can potentially invade Earth in the next sci-fi thriller.

We can even derive an entirely new species based on the environment TRAPPIST-1 presents. Just think of the possibilities. I already have, and it basically culminates in a reboot of Predator, because unfortunately all Hollywood can do these days are remakes.

In leaking Futures new mixtape, NASA has again sparked our interest in the unknown. Whether it stems from our longstanding love affair with films such as E.T., Star Trek, Star Wars, and other sci-fi films, it is evident that regardless of our reasoning, our infatuation with space will continue into the future.

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What is the fascination with space exploration? - Grand Valley Lanthorn