Category Archives: Space Exploration

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After more than a decade of hosting launches of SpaceX's workhorse rocket, the Space Coast is finally getting a Falcon 9 booster to call its own.

Starting next year, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex guests will be able to explore the nineMerlin main engines, re-entry scorch marks,grid fins used for in-flight steering, and massive landing legs attached to the 156-foot booster built in California. All that hardware helped launch two missions: the Thaicom 8 communications satellite in 2016 and the three-core Falcon Heavy's premiere in 2018.

Unlikehistoric rockets in the complex's "Rocket Garden" like early Atlas and Mercury-Redstone, however, Falcon 9 will get special treatment: it will be mounted horizontally in a new attraction called "Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex." It was transported from SpaceX's spaceport facilities to the Visitor Complex on Tuesday.

"It will be hung in such a way that guests will be able to experience it from a 360 point of view," Howard Schwartz, senior director of marketing and sales for the Visitor Complex, told FLORIDA TODAY. "The facility itself is a multi-tiered facility, so guests will be able to see it from the ground floor and as they go up to the second floor."

Since it functioned as a side booster during Falcon Heavy's first flight, it includes the conical "cap" used for aerodynamic purposes. It will remain uncleaned, or "sooty" as space fans like to call it, and keepsthe buildup of black marks caused by its fiery re-entry and subsequent landing at Cape Canaveral's Landing Zone 1.

"This is the first of many different space partner artifacts that we'll have within the building, so our guests are going to have a full 360 visceral experience," Schwartz said of the 53,000-square-foot facility. "There's a lot of hands-on things, a lot of video stuffwe're going to have."

"In addition to that, we're also going to have a must-see space exploration ride within the facility" that will will be revealed closer to the attraction's 2022 opening, he said. The attraction is designed to feature the future of NASA and commercial spaceflight, whereas others like the space shuttle Atlantis exhibit and Apollo/Saturn V Center take on a more historic angle.

To date, the Falcon 9 family has become one of the most prolific and reliable rockets in history. It's flown more than 120 times from a mix of Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Since the first in late 2015, the rocket has also pulled off 90-plusautonomous landings on drone ships and land-based pads.

It currently is the only rocket used to send humans to space from U.S. soil.

The Space Coast hosted nearly all of Falcon 9's firstsincluding landings, debut flights, the first-ever re-flight of a landed booster, and more. Despite that, Space Center Houston in Texas put one of the rockets on display in late 2020, though its attraction is located outdoors and lacks encapsulation in a building like the one coming to the Visitor Complex. SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, also has one on display outside in a vertical orientation with its landing legs deployed.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launches from KSC, boosters land at Cape Canaveral

SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018 and landed two of the side boosters at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

That's not to say displaying used hardwareisn't an involved process from borrowing agreements to planning to permitting to actual construction, a significant amount of paperwork and hands-on effort goes into presentingspaceflight history.

"Everything has been done from a safety and hazard precaution point of view to make sure that this is able to be viewed from a guest perspective for a long period of time," Schwartz said. "So a lot of work has been done by our partners at SpaceX and our teams here to make sure it is guest-facing from a safety standards and hazards sense."

Schwartz was unable to provide information on pricing agreements, the length of time SpaceX agreed to lend the booster, and other details related to the new attraction. He did say, however, that the Visitor Complex was excited about the booster and in-the-works agreements with hardware from other companies.

Falcon 9'snext flight, meanwhile, is tentatively planned for no earlier than late September. A batch of Starlink satellites will fly from KSC's pad 39A or the Cape's Launch Complex 40 followed by a booster landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

For the latest, visit floridatoday.com/launchschedule.

Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com or 321-242-3715. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @EmreKelly. Support space journalism by subscribing atfloridatoday.com/specialoffer/.

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The Space Coast is finally getting its own SpaceX Falcon 9 booster - Florida Today

As private companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic break new ground with fully crewed spaceflights, commercial space travel is beginning to feel less and less like fantasy.

For the time being, space exploration is reserved for scientists, engineers and billionaires, but its likely only a matter of time before advances in technology begin to democratize access. And the beneficiaries will include businesses, as well as intrepid tourists.

Its all too easy, however, to be seduced by the possibilities of space and lose sight of the multitude of risks. For example, a new report from security company Kaspersky asserts that the threat posed by cyberattacks against space infrastructure is in danger of being overlooked.

Although the threat level remains relatively low for now, the report predicts the volume of attacks against space infrastructure is set to skyrocket, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

In every new domain, people focus on the availability of a service before security. Space exploration is in that phase at the moment; there are a lot of systems with basic or no security, explained Maher Yamout, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky.

Maybe people think there is no risk for space stations and sensors, because they are out of reach, but attacks are already taking place.

The report divides space infrastructure into three categories - the user segment, ground segment and space layer - all of which are vulnerable to attack in their own specific ways.

The user segment is made up of the devices and networks used by administrators to monitor technologies deployed in space. The role of the ground segment, meanwhile, is to receive communications from the satellites and craft in the space layer, as well as to deliver instruction.

Already, intrusions have been identified that affect each of these layers. For example, in 2019, NASA discovered a threat actor had successfully compromised its network and deployed a hardware backdoor (in the form of a Raspberry Pi) to steal sensitive information. And in the ground segment, there is an opportunity for traffic interception, which could allow an attacker to snoop on satellite communication and inject traffic to communicate with a virus.

Although there are currently no known examples of cybercriminals hacking directly into satellites, vulnerabilities in the user and ground segments have been exploited in attempt to alter the flight path of satellites in orbit.

By design, every piece of infrastructure has entry points, each of which has the potential to create opportunities for attackers, said Yamout. On Earth, with all the advancements and new technologies, we have a relatively good level of security protection. But in space systems, the protections are much more basic.

With evolving technology and science, it is likely we will visit space more than we used to. Cybersecurity has to be considered when designing space systems in all layers and must integrate in all segments and phases of the space domain evolution.

No matter how well space infrastructure is protected, however, criminals will find a way to launch attacks. The question then becomes: who and why?

At the moment, the incentives for cyber actors to launch attacks against space infrastructure are relatively few. With little opportunity to generate revenue, only a minority of hackers are likely to be interested.

The current space cybercrime landscape is dominated by state-sponsored actors, Yamout told us. These individuals or groups are not in it for money, but rather information that might accelerate domestic space research or provide an intelligence advantage over a rival nation. At a stretch, cyber mercenaries employed by private businesses may also be involved in intelligence gathering activities at this stage.

However, as the number of private businesses operating in space increases (think space mining and telecommunications, as well as tourism), the door will open to a variety of different kinds of attack, from a wider range of actors.

Cybercriminals are only really interested in making money, explained Yamout. Once space is commercialized and technology becomes sophisticated enough to install malware, criminals will be able to deploy ransomware against critical infrastructure, for example.

This is a big deal, because infrastructure in space costs a lot of money and is not easy to replace, so criminals will have significant leverage in negotiations.

The fundamental principles of cybercrime are the same in space as they are on earth. As money floods into the sector, its likely that some of it will flow into the pockets of cybercriminals too.

Its even likely, he says, that hacktivists and script kiddies (amateur hackers looking to hone their craft) could cause problems, launching nuisance attacks that bypass the basic levels of protection, if only to prove that its possible.

In the worst case scenarios Yamout described, cyberattacks on space infrastructure will place human lives at risk, either by causing the loss of communication with Earth or the loss of control of space equipment.

Spacecraft (both manned and otherwise) are heavily reliant on communications to function. And its possible, at the whim of a nation-state or cybercriminal actor, that a shuttle could be set adrift with fatal consequences.

According to Yamout, cybercriminals that manage to infiltrate the ground segment could alsoestablish so-called kamikaze satellites, which could be instructed to crash into technology deployed at the space layer (and cut off a line of communication in the process).

In some scenarios, the consequences of cyberattacks will be felt most acutely on Earth itself. Imagine a scenario whereby a cybercriminal is able to jam signals emitted by GPS satellites, bringing journeys to a standstill, leaving ships lost at sea and more.

The best way to limit attacks of this kind, says Yamout, is to raise awareness early in the cycle, in the hope the industry will recognize the importance not just of breaking new ground in space, but of building security into infrastructure from the start.

History proves that new domains often begin with few resources and basic capabilities, opening the gate to a multitude of cyber threats, he added. The hope is that we wont repeat the same mistakes in space - the next cyber frontier.

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Kamikaze satellites and shuttles adrift: Why cyberattacks are a major threat to humanity's ambitions in space - TechRadar

September 15, 2021, 9:00 AM HST * Updated September 15, 8:40 AM

One of the original crew members of the first University of Hawaii Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation program (HI-SEAS) on Mauna Loa is headed into space as part of the worlds first all-civilian mission to orbit Earth, Inspiration4.

Geoscientist Sian Proctor was one of six crew members who emerged on Aug. 13, 2013, after spending four months at the HI-SEAS habitat as part of a NASA-funded study to investigate food strategies for long-duration space travel.

Inspiration4 has announced a 5-hour launch window beginning Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021, from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch vehicle is a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The plan is for Inspiration4 to travel in a low Earth orbit on a multi-day journey. According to the mission website, the crew will conduct experiments while traveling weightless at more than 17,000 miles per hour.

Researchers will also collect environmental and biomedical data and biological samples from the four crew members, before, during and after the historic spaceflight.

HI-SEAS Principal Investigator and UH Mnoa Professor of Information and Computer Sciences Kim Binsted is planning to attend the launch.

The launch is scheduled for 8 p.m. EDT or 2 p.m. HST.

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Former HI-SEAS Crew Member Headed to Space on First All-Civilian Mission - Big Island Now

Big bet by Cathie Wood Ark Invest Space Exploration Fund A Japanese company with a history of 100 years.A sample of a huge growl Las Vegas mining vehicleSoftbanks Masayoshi Son is doing his best to blow the word smabo from the deck of the pretend Star Cruiser to Earth.

In some respects, its the perfect time to be a robot.

The most flashy of these three signals could always come from my son. My son is a rare Japanese business leader who has the courage to celebrate his defeat as a victory. He did this last week during his opening remarks at Softbank World, an annual jumboly for clients of his technology conglomerate. My sons topic was robots. this is, Humiliation retirement A few months before Pepper, Softbanks flagship automaton Reduce investment Boston Dynamics has no investment in Japanese robotics by the $ 100 billion Vision Fund.

Braver was still supposed to start his speech, his son was piled up inside the Kubrikesk spacecraft, and Peppers slide was defeated. Its time to learn from these primitive toys, move on, execute messages, and fight even harder for the future of smart robots with AI turbochargers, or Smabo. Other than my son, Im unlikely to call them.

Despite his enthusiasm, the speech was not a bright time. Japans most prominent tech guru reveals that, for all of its reputation and expertise, it is at risk of losing its protagonist in the fate of Sumabo unless it acts faster than it is today. Im afraid. We need more than the good old days, he said, chilling the fake starry sky with the message that the countrys technologically pioneering past does not guarantee the future.

But in contrast to these uncertainties, Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest and one of the worlds hottest investors, is undergoing a technology-centric global industrial revolution. I am confident in Japans ability to lead. .. She did this through a large investment in Komatsu, where excavators, dump trucks and bulldozers live in large numbers at mines and construction sites around the world. As of last week, this stock is the seventh heaviest stock in Arks. Autonomous Technology and Robotics ETFs (With twice the weight of its US rival Caterpillar), and what some consider to be the larger range, is the eighth in the Arks Space Exploration and Innovation ETF.

Komatsus long-term watchers may guess what Wood saw at the company. Its not a robot maker in the traditional sense, but its vast with the types of communication, data collection, and data processing tools that can make current operations more efficient and ultimately lead to more people. A consistent pioneer in the business of strengthening machines, of which humans are gone. Or, in all practical senses, a robot.

As they hone their skills, Komatsu has deployed autonomous dump trucks, pre-excavation surveillance drones, and so-called first generation even faster than its rivals.Smart structureA site where automation ultimately ends human needs. The company hasnt talked much about space exploration so far.

At a meeting Sponsored by Mizuho this monthWood praised Komatsus aggressive approach to autonomous technology and was able to get a glimpse of her thoughts. She said the Ark Space Foundation includes not only orbit, but also under-orbit space, including drones, which Komatsu is increasingly creating permanent features of domestic construction sites. Robot engineering, energy storage, artificial intelligence. They are all accepted by Japan, he said.

Komatsu said that CLSA analyst Edward Bourlet has also made significant tonal changes. Min Expo, held in Las Vegas last week, is the industrys largest showcase, and Komatsu has so far taken it as an opportunity to showcase the latest mechanical colossal statues in its portfolio. This time, Komatsu was marketing its products to the mining industry under great pressure related to ESG investors, selling stories focused on the efficiency-focused software behind the mammoth.

What Son, Wood, and Komatsu all seem to know is that robots are entering a clear new phase, both conceptually and as the focus of their most valuable efforts. Success is now defined by context rather than functionality. Peppers, who wield articulated arms to store customers, arent really robots, but they end up being unmanned dump trucks that politely give way to self-driving excavators in unoccupied mines.

leo.lewis@ft.com

Robots have entered a new phase and Cathie Wood is betting on it Source link Robots have entered a new phase and Cathie Wood is betting on it

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Robots have entered a new phase and Cathie Wood is betting on it - Californianewstimes.com

Boris Johnson plans to press Amazon boss Jeff Bezos on the tech giants tax record when the pair meet face to face in New York on Monday, Downing Street has said.

The prime minister will meet Bezos as part of a three-day trip to New York and Washington, where Johnson will address the UN general assembly and hold talks with the US president, Joe Biden, and his deputy, Kamala Harris, at the White House.

After setting out contingency plans for coping with Covid in England this winter, and conducting a ruthless reshuffle of his top team, Johnson hopes to switch the focus to the global agenda on his first trip outside the UK since the beginning of the pandemic.

Amazon, which made Bezos its founder and former chief executive who is now its executive chairman a multibillionaire, has faced persistent questions over whether it pays its fair share of tax, as well as the terms and conditions faced by its workforce.

It was recently revealed that Amazons revenues in the UK increased by more than 50% in 2020 to 20.63bn, but its key UK division paid just 18.3m in direct taxes.

Bezos made a brief journey into space in his rocket New Shepard earlier this year, as part of what has been dubbed the billionaires space race, with other super-rich men including Teslas Elon Musk developing their own rival space vehicles.

Asked whether Johnson would raise Amazons tax record with Bezos, the prime ministers official spokesperson said: Yes, you can expect the prime minister to raise this important issue.

As you know, weve been a leading advocate for an international solution to the tax challenges posed by the digitalisation of the economy, the spokesperson said, adding: We secured an agreement at the G7 on digital tax, so well very much be looking to raise that.

With Biden a strong advocate of a more robust approach to taxing corporations, the move may be partly aimed at emphasising Johnsons reforming credentials before the important White House trip.

Johnson is also expected to press Biden to lift the travel ban that prevents most passengers from the UK visiting the US. The two countries established a working group three months ago to work on opening up travel, but no proposals have yet emerged from it.

England will substantially loosen travel restrictions next month, replacing the three-tier traffic light system with two levels, and easing testing requirements for double-vaccinated passengers returning from non-red list countries.

Also on the agenda as world leaders meet in New York will be the wests hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan and how to handle the new Taliban government.

Bidens arrival in the White House has spurred fresh global attempts at cooperation on tax, which had been blocked by Donald Trump.

G7 leaders signed a historic agreement at Junes summit in Cornwall aimed at tying the tax revenues of the biggest multinational tech firms more closely to the revenues they earn in each country, and setting a 15% minimum corporation tax rate.

More than 130 countries have since signed up to the proposals, which are being overseen by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and aim to end a race to the bottom that has undermined corporate tax revenues by pitting countries against each other.

However, the UK has attracted criticism over pushing for the financial sector to be exempt from the new system. Final details of how the new system will work are now being hammered out, with some countries, including low-tax Ireland, still reluctant to sign up.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, last year unilaterally imposed a 2% digital services tax on multinational tech firms a levy that would be expected to lapse if a global deal is reached.

Johnson will also discuss the climate crisis with Bezos, No 10 said. The Amazon founder believes his efforts at space exploration are part of the solution.

We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry and move it into space, and keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is, Bezos told the US broadcaster MSNBC in July.

The prime minister hopes to use the trip to galvanise international action, with just weeks to go before the UK hosts the UNs critical Cop26 summit.

The Cop26 chair, Alok Sharma, will travel with Johnson, as will the new foreign secretary, Liz Truss.

After the G7 summit, Johnson faced criticism for failing to persuade fellow leaders to sign up to a specific end date for the use of coal, or a concrete plan to raise the $100bn (73bn) in finance they have long promised, to help developing countries to transition away from polluting technologies and manage the impacts of extreme weather.

The OECD published a report on Friday showing that the target would be missed by about $20bn.

Downing Street said Johnson would use meetings on the sidelines of the UN general assembly this week to press for the $100bn promise to be honoured. As a down payment, the government is announcing that 550m of the 11.6bn the UK has set aside for climate finance over the next five years will go to developing countries.

At the end of the week, the UK will publish details of countries climate finance commitments to date. Germany and Canada have been leading on a $100bn delivery plan, which will be published before the Cop26 Summit.

Johnson said: In coming together to agree the $100bn pledge, the worlds richest countries made an historic commitment to the worlds poorest we now owe it to them to deliver on that.

Richer nations have reaped the benefits of untrammelled pollution for generations, often at the expense of developing countries. As those countries now try to grow their economies in a clean, green and sustainable way, we have a duty to support them in doing so with our technology, with our expertise and with the money we have promised.

Johnson is expected to be challenged by EU leaders about the UKs controversial participation in the Aukus deal the trilateral agreement with Australia and the US on military cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.

France has been enraged by the deal, which saw the cancellation of a French contract to build nuclear submarines for Australia. Paris took the extraordinary step on Friday of withdrawing its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra for consultations.

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Boris Johnson to address Amazons tax record with Jeff Bezos on US visit - The Guardian

This article is sponsored by KAUST.

The landing of NASAs Perseverance Rover on Mars in February, which began a two-year search for evidence of microbial life on the planet, is a massive scientific milestone.

Perseverance is the most sophisticated robotic geologist built. Fitted with a high-resolution, color, 3D panoramic camera, Perseverance is blasting data and images of the Martian landscape back to Earth from 173 million miles away. Amazingly, this data often reaches Earth in around three minutes.

Our capacity to receive images and interact with autonomous vehicles on Mars dwarfs our capacity to observe Earths deep ocean. Its an embarrassing reminder of the abysmal technological gap between space exploration and oceanic exploration. We are yet to transmit a single image without cables from the seafloor to the ocean surface, just 2.4 miles above, because the acoustic technology used for underwater communications is too slow for near-real time video streaming. The acoustic waves that submarine communications rely on take 3.4 seconds to travel a distance of 3.1 miles under water. For reference, images from space travel around 150,000 times faster.

And the technological gap extends far beyond data communications. We are yet to develop an autonomous vehicle able to roam the sea floor for a full day, compared to at least two full years of autonomous Mars exploration with NASAs Perseverance Rover.

And the technology gap is growing as ocean exploration technology has remained largely stagnant over the past five decades. The conductivity, temperature, depth (CTD) probe the workhorse of oceanography is fundamentally the same as the ones used three decades ago. The SCUBA gear we put on to conduct scientific research today is very much the same as the gear we first used 40 years ago. As is the research vessels and deep-sea research submersibles. The only underwater laboratory in the world, Aquarius, is about to be decommissioned and is the same one that NASA designed and NOAA placed in the water in 2001.

We submit that there is currently no innovation happening for underwater technology. Its particularly frustrating to those who see the potential in a "blue economy," which would be enabled by a deeper understanding of the oceans and a restoration of the abundance of marine life.

The reality is that our capacity to sense the marine environment remains primitive, and embarrassing. Considered that Malaysian airlines MH 370 fell into the Indian Ocean and was never found, despite major efforts. There are, however, a few small glimmers of hope.

The sensor revolution that is affecting every aspect of our lives, from phones to cars to wearables, is finally making its way underwater. At King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), we lead and funded an international effort to develop the new generation of marine sensors; wearables for marine life. This proved challenging, as its hard to imagine a medium less welcoming to electronics than the ocean: An environment corrosive to standard minerals, conductive to electricity, where pressure mounts to enormous values as you go deeper, where microbes grow on every surface and where data transmission remains a challenge.

We developed novel technology based on printed, flexible electronics. The Marine Skin conforms to the bodies of marine animals, unlike the bulky sensor packages used previously. We also developed graphene-based sensor technology, as we found graphene is a wonderful material to overcome the many constraints of the marine environment for electronics, including preventing the growth of microbes. However, despite these advances, submarine wireless data transmission and retrieval remains challenging.

Underwater optical wireless communication is emerging as a possible solution with the groundbreaking work first demonstrated by Ooi and collaborators at KAUST, involving transmitting data two gigabit per second across 65 feet, using laser-based technology. Thats equivalent to downloading a standard one gigabyte movie in four seconds.

A change of optical receivers and relays intersected at about 328-foot distances could possibly transmit optical data from the seafloor to the surface, but as a cable will be required, it would still tether our ocean exploration to the sea surface with cables.

NASAs Perseverance Rover exposes long-pending challenges as we inaugurate the 2021-2030 United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, aiming at supporting efforts to reverse the cycle of declining ocean health and support the development of a "blue economy." But how can science support what it can hardly observe?

The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development program does not address the need to advance marine technology. We believe this to be a major omission that perpetuates the technology gap. For the UN Decade of Ocean Science to truly support the development of a sustainable blue economy it must aim to bring submarine exploration to match the technological sophistication of space exploration, overcoming the chronic neglect of our own ocean. This stagnation of ocean technology is an unacceptable roadblock for the sustainable use of the ocean.

We witness entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson, competing in the space exploration race, and indeed it is likely that the impetus to innovate must come from the minds of bold innovators rather than governments.

Who among us is bold enough to help ocean exploration make the quantum leaps necessary to catch up with space exploration?

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The space-age tech we need to save our planet | Greenbiz - GreenBiz

SpaceX launches its CRS-22 mission to the International Space Station on June 3, 2021. Photo: spacex/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew higher and orbited longer than Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos combined aboard Vostok 1, the worlds first piloted space flight. Upon his return to Earth, Gagarin became a global celebrity, traveling the world and recounting what it felt like to drift weightless and see the planet from above. For a brief moment, he transcended the boundaries of the Cold War, greeting cheering crowds in both Soviet and US-allied countries, capturing our collective fascination with the cosmos.

The Vostok mission was meticulously planned and engineered, its cosmonauts trained for years. Its successor, Soyuz 1, was a different story. The 7K-OK spacecraft had been hastily constructed, its three unmanned flight tests all ending in failure. According to one account, Gagarin helped detail over 200 structural concerns in a report urging the flight be called off. Its rumored that he even tried to take his fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarovs place piloting the doomed mission. In the end Komarovs parachute failed to deploy and he burst into flames on reentry, plummeting at 40 meters per second into Earth.

In aeronautics, the margin between triumph and tragedy is narrow. While hubris may have been Soyuz 1s fatal flaw, the pursuit of profit has similarly incentivised corner-cutting in the US space programme. NASA, once the crown jewel of the public sector, has been slowly sold off to private contractors in the neoliberal era.

Since 2020, NASA astronauts have ridden SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets into orbit, a model that has raised safety concerns among engineers and logged more failures since its debut in 2006 than the space shuttle did in 30 years. Recently, another NASA contractor, Virgin Galactic, was grounded for investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration after its pilots failed to notify the agency that its celebrated Unity flight was veering into commercial airspace.

Space exploration for the people

How can space exploration serve society?

Our first priority must be to decarbonise spaceflight. Without achieving this, the emissions that space flight generates are hardly justifiable given the state of our planet. Like the space blanket and cochlear implant, the applications of zero-carbon jet fuel would go far beyond the space program that developed it. Commercial aviation contributes an estimated 3.5% of effective radiative forcing a figure that space tourism could skyrocket.

Due to the weight of batteries and other logistical challenges, hydrogen fuel cells are considered one of the few viable pathways to decarbonising long-distance flight. While some private space corporations have begun incorporating hydrogen, the fuel production is likely emissions-intensive and the technology remains proprietary. A publicly directed moonshot research program, coupled with tight restrictions on fossil-fueled rocket launches, could greatly accelerate the implementation of green hydrogen fuel cells in aviation and other difficult-to-decarbonise sectors.

In addition to our atmosphere, we must respect the sanctity of orbital space, which we have littered with trash. The Defense Departments Space Surveillance Network currently estimates there are more than 27,000 pieces of debris orbiting Earth. Yet even as their own ships run a gauntlet of garbage, billionaires are trashing space more than ever.

While perhaps none match the vanity of the Tesla Roadster, competing commercial satellite networks like Musks Starlink and Bezos Project Kuiper actually pose a much greater collision threat and are also egregious sources of light pollution and electromagnetic interference. These redundant and dangerous monuments to the egos of oligarchs ought to be taken down from our skies along with other forms of space trash.

Rather than granting billions in subsidies to enable this pollution, governments should instead collect the taxes that corporations like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have evaded and use them to create public sector careers cleaning up their mess. To the extent that it is useful, publicly sponsored infrastructure in private hands should be nationalised and made accessible to all.

The trade-offs between telecommunications infrastructure and preservation of dark skies highlight another core failure of NASAs past: the lack of a planetary internationalism. In 2013, the Bolivian Space Agency and the China National Space Administration collaboratively launched the Tpac Katari 1 satellite (TKSat 1), demonstrating how easy it could be to close the space infrastructure gap between the Global North and South.

Also read: The Story of the Grand Collective Project That Launched Yuri Gagarin Into Space

The same year that the United States proposed to desecrate a Hawaiian sacred site for a telescope, Bolivia used space technology to bring internet and cell service for the first time to millions of Andean and Amazonian citizens. Since then, TKSat 1 has boosted education and development initiatives and even helped defend Bolivian democracy by relaying the transmissions of campesinos resisting the US-backed coup government in real time.

Satellites can serve many other public interests, such as facilitating research that helps scientists monitor problems like climate change, deforestation and forced labour. While todays satellite infrastructure is used to commercialise communication and fuel mass surveillance, an international consensus to treat telecommunications and information access as public rights could instead provide free global broadband coverage with minimal infrastructure, balancing scientific advancement with our collective view of the stars.

Finally, a socialist vision for space exploration could enable us to reach our full potential to venture into the unknown. History enshrines the intrepid explorers, but the true heroes of the space age are the workers at ground control. Yuri Gagarin made it home safely because of his command crews stationed from Baikonur to Khabarovsk. Apollo 13 famously called on Houston when they had a problem. Today, many of our brightest astrophysicists and aerospace engineers are swept up by military departments and weapons manufacturers. We should use their talents for science and education instead.

Visions of hopeful futures

In his final years of reflection on our Pale Blue Dot, astronomer Carl Sagan pondered, Where are the cartographers of human purpose? Where are the visions of hopeful futures of technology as a tool for human betterment and not a gun on hair trigger pointed at our heads? Sagans legacy including the worlds first and only interstellar mission offers a glimpse of this vision.

We can choose to collaboratively probe into the depths of the cosmos, conveying collections of human knowledge, or to taxi billionaires to spend four minutes at the edge of space, indulging their fantasy of escaping the planet theyre poisoning with the very fuel propelling them. In either case, the financial, intellectual and human costs will be borne by the public.

Fortunately, if theres one thing that space exploration has taught us, its that fate isnt written in the stars. That happens down here on Earth.

This article was first published by Jacobin Magazine and has been republished here with permission.

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The Billionaire Race Has Perverted What Space Exploration Should Really Be About - The Wire Science

Nasa has revealed it is looking forward to seeing an Australian flag on the moon.

The disclosure was made by Pam Melroy, who was integral to establishing the Australian Space Agency and is one of only two women to captain the space shuttle. She was sworn in to her new role of Nasa deputy administrator in June, and on Wednesday beamed in to the Australian Space Forum hosted by the Andy Thomas Space Foundation in Adelaide.

She outlined Nasas plans to go to the moon and said it was a mission for Spaceship Earth.

We are not planning to do this alone. We think its incredibly important to go together, she said.

It was so important that Australia was one of the initial signatories of the Artemis Accords. Signing the Artemis Accords automatically put Australia at the forefront of global leadership and I am so proud that we partnered with Australia.

The accords are new international agreements governing space exploration, and exist in addition to the Outer Space Treaty. Australia signed up a year ago and the partnership means Australian companies will be involved in the Moon to Mars initiative.

As we look at this rich tapestry of capabilities that weve put together, I look forward to partnering with Australia, to see which parts of it, which elements Australia wants to take complete ownership of, Melroy said.

I look forward to seeing an Australian flag on the moon in the not-too-distant future.

Earlier this year China became the second nation (after the United States) to plant a flag on the celestial body. After the Apollo 11 mission planted the first flag (with a horizontal pole to stop it drooping) the US planted five more.

Also at the forum, Nasa astronaut Shannon Walker spoke about her recent stint on the International Space Station, with long days full of science experiments, exercise, and the occasional break to watch a movie or look out at Earth from the ISSs cupola.

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Walker also has close ties to Australia she is married to Australian astronaut Andy Thomas and pre-pandemic they visited often from Texas. Thomas has previously spoken about the possibility of having Aussienauts on future space missions.

She spoke about the role of space exploration in furthering science, and how the Artemis mission to put the first woman on the moon will inspire girls and young women to study STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects.

On her orbital travels, she took a stuffed kangaroo called Purra. Purra, a present from the Australian Space Agency, is named for a red kangaroo that features in an Aboriginal astronomy story that is significant for the Boorong people in Victoria.

And Kaurna leader Jack Buckskin crafted a boomerang that was sent up to her on a Tesla Falcon 9 rocket.

Hopefully soon the pandemic will allow me to bring it back to Australia and give it back to the people there, Walker said.

Continued here:

Its important we go together: time for Australian flag to fly on the moon, Nasa says - The Guardian

SpaceX launched a motley crew of amateur astronauts into space on Wednesday in the first ever all-civilian orbital mission.

The crew of four civilians includes a high-school dropout for a commander, a medical officer who survived cancer as a child, an artist and college professor, and a man who won his seat through a charity donation.

Here's who they are, what their background is, and how they got their seats on what is set to be one of the most significant space tourism flights of all time.

Commander and Benefactor: Jared Isaacman

Jared Isaacman, 38, is the driving force behind this adventure, having struck a private deal with SpaceX.

The terms of that deal haven't been disclosed, but Mr Isaacman is using the trip to raise $200m (146m) for St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee - with half coming from his own pockets - and said the anticipated donation to St Jude's "vastly exceeds the cost of the mission".

A high school drop-out, Mr Isaacman is the founder and chief executive of Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company which he started as a 16-year-old in 1999.

Reportedly a billionaire and a keen pilot, he set a speed record flying around the world in 2009 while raising money for the Make-A-Wish programme, and later established Draken International, the world's largest private fleet of fighter jets.

He said: "I truly want us to live in a world 50 or 100 years from now where people are jumping in their rockets like the Jetsons and there are families bouncing around on the moon with their kid in a spacesuit.

"I also think if we are going to live in that world, we better conquer childhood cancer along the way."

Chief medical officer and Hope seat: Hayley Arceneaux

When Hayley Arceneaux was just 10 years old, she was diagnosed with bone cancer. She received treatment at the St Jude Children's Research Hospital, including chemotherapy and a limb-saving surgery.

This surgery involved replacing her knee and placing a titanium rod in her left femur.

Now, as a healthy adult, Ms Arceneaux works at the hospital - which she credits with saving her life - as a physician assistant for patients with leukaemia and lymphoma.

She was selected for the mission by Mr Isaacman, who said he couldn't think of a better brand ambassador to represent St Jude and the spirit of hope on his mission.

"It's an incredible honour to be a part of this mission that is not only raising crucial funds for the lifesaving work of St. Jude, but also introducing new supporters to the cause and showing cancer survivors that anything is possible," she said.

Generosity seat: Chris Sembroski

Chris Sembroski won his seat on the mission courtesy of a friend who donated to St Jude in July.

He's an employee of Lockheed Martin and a veteran of the US Air Force, where he helped maintain a fleet of the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles and deployed in Iraq.

He is described as having long held an interest in space exploration, and after leaving the Air Force studied professional aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where he met the unidentified friend who gave him his seat.

"Joining the Inspiration4 crew and its mission of support for St Jude is truly a dream come true. It is my hope that this flight will inspire others to pay that generosity forward by pledging their support for St Jude and encouraging kids to dream the impossible, ushering in a new era of space exploration open to all," he said.

Prosperity seat: Dr Sian Proctor

Dr Sian Proctor was previously a finalist for the 2009 astronaut programme at NASA, has a pilot license, and works as a professor of geoscience at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona.

She was born in Guam to a father who worked for NASA at a tracking station there during the Apollo missions, and has conducted a series of simulated space missions at the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) Habitat.

She won her seat as a customer of Mr Isaacman's Shift4 Payments, as part of a plan to select someone "who utilises the new Shift4Shop eCommerce platform, which empowers entrepreneurs to build and grow successful eCommerce businesses online".

Dr Proctor has given a TEDx talk called Eat Like a Martian and previously published the Meals for Mars Cookbook, following her NASA-funded HI-SEAS mission on food strategies for long-term space travel.

As an artist, she tries to encourage conversations about creating a JEDI Space, or a space environment that is Just, Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive.

She said: "I am thrilled to part of the historic Inspiration4 crew and to represent the Prosperity seat. Going to space has always been a dream of mine, and being able to inspire the world through art and poetry makes it even more special for me."

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SpaceX: Who are the civilians on the Inspiration4 mission? - Sky News

If youve ever wondered how Amazon will eventually come into play in space (besides a trip from Jeff Bezos), a new series with roots in Reston, Virginia, might have your answers.

ASCEND, an online professional community for those interested in space exploration, has a brand new series on what the future of space might look like. Short for Accelerate Space Commerce, Exploration, and New Discovery, Restons ASCEND was launched in 2020 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an aerospace technical society.

Fast Forward: Envisioning the Off-World Future, which premiered last month, is a new video series on what the future of space might look like.The on-demand series, which is releasing new episodes a few times per month, covers the growth of industries in space, from infrastructure to medical science and commerce. Its pilot episode, Accelerating Biomedical R&D in Space, features Techshot VP Rich Boling and covers the biomedical industry in space (in other words, manufacturing organs in space). The series is hosted by Devin Liddell, principal futurist at design firm Teague, and Kara Cunzeman, lead futurist for strategic foresight at The Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit for space analyses and testing.

Liddell told Technical.ly that the intention of the series is to help people get a grasp on what the future of space will really look like, and how close we are to a whole host of innovation that seems like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Fast Forward cohost Devin Liddell (Courtesy photo)

When you start thinking about what will happen in space, in particular, the activities of industry, I think there is a tendency to think about it perhaps too narrowly, Liddell said. So one of the things we want to get across with the series is Hey, here are some key industries that may actually be unexpected from your research point, and what theyre anticipating doing in space near-term and far-term, and its extraordinary.

Each episode, which will run about 25-30 minutes, will feature a guest expert to talk about a specific facet of the space industry. Next up will be Michael Costas of Bechtel Corporation, an engineering and construction firm, and Brian Barritt, an engineering manager from Facebook.

While there are many facets of technology involved in a space trip, Liddell said he hopes to highlight aspects of artificial intelligence in future episodes.

So, how do we illuminate some of those technical challenges that were going to have to solve for? Liddell said. Yes, theyre challenges, but theyre also exciting ones.

Cunzeman, on the other hand, said shes particularly fascinated by the manufacturing possibilities within space. In the same way that she said companies like Amazon will be predicting when people run out of frequently bought items, like dog food, and replenish them, that same technology can be applied to the International Space Station and lunar bases.

Theres some real benefits for space as a manufacturing ecosystem, and thats not on Mars, thats right in our backyard, Cunzeman said.

Liddell agreed, noting that one exciting part of this technology is that whatever humans replicate for space, it will need to have its own twist and innovation to make it plausible in space.

We think aboutall of the touchpoints that comprise the human experience on Earth, Liddell said. Theres a lot of that which will import into space in fairly translatable ways, but theres a lot that actually will have slight turns that will be extraordinary in their own way.

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Tune in to Fast Forward, a new video series on the space industry's future from Reston's ASCEND - Technical.ly DC