Category Archives: Space Travel

Estonia will receive a 100th birthday gift next year that will be truly out of this world as part of the countrys centenary celebrations in 2018, ESTCube will unveil its second satellite while its team embarks on a mission across Estonia to educate young people about opportunities within the space industry.

ESTCube-2 will be three times larger and far more complex than its predecessor, ESTCube-1, which turned Estonia into an unlikely space nation when it entered orbit in 2013.

ESTCube-2 is planned to blast off in 2019 and will operate at approximately 680 kilometres (423 miles) above Earth, which is almost twice as high as the International Space Station. However, the satellite is being designed to boldly go much further.

The satellite will serve as a prototype for ESTCube-3, an Estonian mission to orbit the moon that will blast off in the early 2020s. In addition, the European Space Agency is now officially considering a joint Estonian-Finnish proposal to send a swarm of satellites based on the same Estonian design to rendez-vous with hundreds of asteroids.

The main objective for ESTCube-2 is to test a plasma brake. This is a new method of deorbiting satellites, which could help mitigate the problem of space debris. A tether is charged in the ionosphere and the braking force then enables the satellite to drop out of orbit up to ten times faster than current methods.

ESTCube-3 will go even further, both literally and in its experiments. Its main objective will be to test electric sail technology, an advanced new method of propulsion that uses solar wind instead of the ionosphere, as in the case of the plasma brake. This could enable quicker and much more cost-effective space missions without the burden of carrying fuel.

The ability to sail the solar wind could revolutionise the space economy by improving the ease of travel around our solar system. The ESTCube team believes this technology could one day be used to transport cargo between planets and asteroids, which could assist with activities such as mining and exploration beyond Earth.

The ambitious asteroid mission, which the European Space Agency revealed, would use electric sail technology to travel towards and gather information about asteroids that could be used for mining or deflecting one in future that threatened Earth.

Tartu Observatory provides ESTCube with a large proportion of its finance and facilities, including laboratories and the ground control for monitoring missions. The observatory will merge with the University of Tartu at the start of next year, which will provide greater opportunities for students to develop their skills within the emerging space industry, according to Anu Reinart, the director of Tartu Observatory.

We will have more power to influence the study programme and greater links with the students, Reinart says. This is important because one of the main things we are lacking in Estonia is enough high level researchers and engineers in the field of space technology.

ESTCube-1 was built on a low budget, but the commercial and academic benefits from the mission are now visible across Estonia. The European Space Agency has since placed orders for satellite-mounted cameras from the team, as well as announced that its next business incubation centre will be established in Tartu.

There are also several offshoot space companies now based in Estonia, such as Captain Corrosion, which has commissioned the corrosion protection testing onboard ESTCube-2. Tallinn University of Technology is also developing its first satellite so both programmes are now sharing technical expertise and advice.

We are building an Estonian space industry, Andris Slavinskis, the head of the space technology department of Tartu Observatory, says. Working with students is how you develop the next generation of space engineers. They are so excited about space technology so its easy to get them involved. In ten years, we will have a better balance between students and professionals, but it is always good to have students involved as it provides a new generation coming up after you.

While some of Estonias space pioneers have now found opportunities working around the world, the emerging industry in Estonia has also attracted talent from abroad as its reputation rises. This includes Slavinskis himself who is Latvian.

ESTCube is probably one of the best examples in Estonia about how to organise an international, high technology team working on exciting projects, he notes. It was clear when reading post-doc applications from around the world.

ESTCube-2 has a range of tasks to complete in Earth orbit for researchers in Estonia, including Earth observation and corrosion protection experiments, before the final deorbiting.

However, the electric sail does not work near Earth as the solar wind is blocked by the planets magnetic field, which is why ESTCube has set its sights on the moon for the subsequent mission. Orbiting the moon will be more complex and more costly to launch so using the same design for ESTCube-2 and fully testing it in space will help lower the risks of the ESTCube-3 mission.

We are designing this [ESTCube-2] mission to be taken to the moon, Slavinskis says. Everything is being built in a way so that we can very rapidly fix any problems and take the next mission to the moon. We can then test the electric solar wind sail in its real conditions and sail in the solar wind.

There are thousands of operational satellites around the Earth, yet less than a handful around the moon due to the enormous difficulties of keeping orbit in low gravity. All of them eventually crash into the moon with current technology.

The ESTCube team revealed for the first time that they were not only planning to orbit the moon, but also investigating the possibility of using the solar sail to fly away from the moon afterwards.

The moon orbit is very unstable so you can use the electric sail for orbit keeping and remain in there for a very long time, Hendrik Ehrpais, the chief technology officer and the lead of the attitude and arbit control team at ESTCube, says.

Changing the moon orbit or escaping the moon orbit is far more interesting than crashing into the moon. We are investigating the possibility of doing some very cool things, including returning to Earth, but our focus at the moment is building the satellite.

Estonians at home and around the world will be providing gifts to the country on its 100th birthday in 2018. In addition to the satellite itself, ESTCube is keen to provide more people with the opportunity to learn about the upcoming missions and how to get involved.

Members of the team have already started to return to their old schools to discuss the programme and the possibility that pupils could soon be working on the missions themselves. A summer academy is also being launched to provide young Estonians with the opportunity to work on space projects.

I would encourage more Estonians to get involved because I can see how [the ESTCube programme] gives such good skills to people, Reinart states. It is not only technical skills either, because the team is very good at public relations, team building and fundraising. We can do really useful things when we work together.

Estonia is small, but we can do big things here and space is something we are very good at. The technology has developed so much that it is not so expensive anymore and even a small country like Estonia is able to develop miniaturised instruments used in space or create software for complex systems.

Since re-establishing independence, Estonians have been encouraged to think globally in order to find opportunities. As Estonia turns 100, young people will increasingly need to think beyond this Earth too.

I

Cover:ESTCube-2. Images courtesy of ESTCube.

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Estonia's mission to the moon could revolutionise space travel - Estonian World (press release) (blog)

!GQK comes visiting

The other day I met my old friend !GQK from the galaxy next door. He took the wormhole express from planet Gliese 581g and appeared in my guest room quite suddenly. He was tired. He switched on his universal translator and lamented "I travelled economy class; the universal cash crunch is hitting all us researchers". After he had got over his space-lag and got used to our local gravity we went down to that vegetarian restaurant on VIP Road. He has been visiting officially once every 10 Earth Years and the first thing he does is enjoy some idly with several chutneys and sambar. Over breakfast we discussed the purpose of his visit this time.

Research

"I am here to study Vizag's driving habits" he explained. "We at The Galactic Institute have watched the huge increase in vehicular traffic in Vizag and my boss wanted me to verify the reports that we have been getting on the driving habits of the Vizag Earthlings." Looking at the way he was walloping his 4th plate of idlies, I suspected that he had just made an excuse to come here because of his obsession with our ubiquitous tiffin - idly and sambar. Anyway, I settled down deeper into my sofa to hear more.

Horn energy can fuel space travel

!GQK leaned forward and said in a his typical academic tone, "Reports indicate some peculiar habits of the human species here. One of the most perplexing is the propensity of the Vizag driver to blow the horn continuously for no apparent reason. Our researchers have observed, from the space cam footage, that even a lonely bike or car on the NH 16 keeps honking every few seconds". We also note the peculiar habit of the earthling behind our vehicle honking ceaselessly even when the vehicle in the front has no way of going forward or to the side. We are trying to analyse this behaviour." He gestured to the waiter to get another plate of idly, took a sip of water and continued, "We have calculated that all this honking produces enough energy to fuel intergalactic space travel." I sat up incredulously. "Yes indeed" he continued with a small smile "Vizagites do honk a lot". We stopped talking for a moment as an APSRTC bus outside announced its passing with a particularly deafening "air horn".

Pedestrian are for running over

!GQK signalled to the waiter to bring him a peserattu. I checked my wallet surreptitiously to ensure I had enough money to pay the bill. "What other areas are you researching?" I asked, to keep him talking in order to slow down his eating. "Yes" he resumed, "the other area is the interaction between vehicles and pedestrians. In most other intelligent civilizations, the vehicle stops and lets pedestrians cross the road. Our research shows that in Vizag most drivers speed up and try their best to run over the poor earthling crossing the street. It appears more true especially when they are on the zebra stripes on the road which you Vizagites humorously call the 'pedestrian crossing'. It is also observed statistically that small children, elderly men and women and infirm pedestrians are prone to being run over on the pedestrian crossings. We interviewed a number of drivers and all agreed that the white zebra crossings were a wonderful place where you are allowed to run over the human pedestrians but obviously Zebras were not to be harmed".

Roundabouts

I ordered our coffees hoping to put an end to the breakfast session. !GQK wiped off his lips with a tissue and, seeing how impressed I was with his study, restarted his narration. "The other remarkable driver behaviour is at your roundabouts or circles. In most civilizations, depending on which side of the road you drive, you give way to the traffic on the left or on the right. We note that in Vizag, vehicles negotiate these circles using a ritual of bully and bluster. The vehicles at the roundabouts go into some sort of ceremony where all drivers nose into the circle in a concerted manner intimidating each other till the timid ones gives way. Bigger vehicles generally get past the circles quickly whereas smaller vehicles take a long time to get through. We have fed this data into our computers and are analysing if there is some sort of quantum mechanics at work in this chaos; some way, where all drivers communicate with each other at a subliminal level to negotiate these circles. If we are successful we will be introducing the system in the wormhole space traffic intersection system."

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Intergalactic space travel and idilies - Times of India

When it comes to living life as an adventure and beating the odds, American astronaut Captain Mark Kelly can give numerous examples of how he has accomplished both of those goals.

Mark and his identical twin brother Scott Kelly, who is also an astronaut, are the only siblings to have ever traveled in space, providing NASA with a unique and extremely rare opportunity to study the physical differences caused by living in space versus on Earth with two people who share the exact same DNA.

Kelly discussed these experiments and more during a talk at the packed Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church Tuesday to kick off the 2017 Atlanta Science Festival which runs through March 25.

After starting his career in the Navy, Kelly trained with NASA and took his first flight into space in 2001. He described the feeling of seeing the Earth from space as a moment that changed his entire attitude about our planet.

Earth is a round, mostly blue ball just floating there in blackness of space and we were orbiting around it every 90 minutes. The thing that struck me when I first saw it is that our planet is literally an island in our solar system, he said. When you see this from space for the first time, it changes your attitude about the Earth and atmosphere and how we need to take care of this place. From our perspective in orbit, our atmosphere looks like a contact lens on an eyeball, it is so thin.

Kelly discussed his time living on the international space station, which weighs one million pounds and is about the size of a football field, and the physical feeling of lifting off in a shuttle which he described as extremely turbulent and like the hand of God comes down and grabs you and rips your off the planet.

However the biggest challenge Kelly faced in life did not involve a dangerous space mission, he said. It was the moment he learned that his wife, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had been shot in an assignation attempt.

As it would turn out, my wife was the one who would nearly lose her life serving her country, Kelly said. With combat missions or space flight, there is a countdown clock and I understand the decisions I need to make. But on that day, I was at home talking to my kids and I learned my wife had been shot. I have to tell you, it was the most challenging experience of my life.

Giffords was brought to a rehabilitation facility in Houston, Texas, where she recovered some of her ability to walk, speak, read and write. In 2011, Giffords traveled to Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch of STS-134, the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, which was commanded by Mark Kelly.

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After his talk at Emory, Kelly answered audience questions when asked what space smells like, he likened the odor to burnt plastic and when asked how living in space for long periods of time affects the human body, Kelly described how the experiments with himself and his twin brother helped NASA understand that humans lose bone density more rapidly in space.

Kelly concluded his talk by telling future astronauts to stay positive and excited about what is to come for space exploration.

SpaceX in particular is doing some pretty remarkable things. Hopefully, one day well be sending US rockets to the moon, beyond the moon and all the way to Mars, Kelly said. I wanted to be the first person to walk on Mars, but it aint happening. Every kid here has a much greater chance of going and it will be an incredible trip.

For more information about Mark Kelly and the ongoing Atlanta Science Festival, visit http://www.atlantasciencefestival.org.

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Astronaut Mark Kelly gives space travel talk at Emory | DeKalb ... - MDJOnline.com

Carrie Healey, AOL.com

Mar 14th 2017 1:36PM

Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, issued an open letter to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, stating his recommendations for the government's investments in NASA.

The scientist offered the president five recommendations for the U.S. space program in a letter and video, urging Trump to use the bipartisan support for NASA to advance space exploration.

NASA's best photos of 2016

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NASA's best photos of 2016

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Sunset From the International Space Station

Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Jeff Williams of NASA captured a series of photos for this composite image of the setting sun reflected by the ocean.

Photo Credit: NASA

Space Station Flight Over the Southern Tip of Italy

The southern tip of Italy is visible in this image taken by the Expedition 49 crew aboard the International Space Station on Sept. 17, 2016. The brightly lit city of Naples can be seen in the bottom section of the image. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft can be seen in the foreground.

Photo Credit: NASA

Star Trails Seen From Low Earth Orbit

Astronauts on the International Space Station captured a series of incredible star trail images on Oct. 3, 2016, as they orbited at 17,500 miles per hour. The station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, and astronauts aboard see an average of 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.

Photo Credit: NASA

Many Fantastic Colors

The Nili Fossae region, located on the northwest rim of Isidis impact basin, is one of the most colorful regions of Mars. This region is ancient and has had a complicated geologic history, leading to interesting structures like layered bedrock, as well as other compositions.

Photo Credit: NASA

Wind Carved Rock on Mars

The distinctively fluted surface and elongated hills in this image in Medusae Fossae are caused by wind erosion of a soft fine-grained rock. Called yardangs, these features are aligned with the prevailing wind direction. This wind direction would have dominated for a very long time to carve these large-scale features into the exposed rock.

Photo Credit: NASA

Rains of Terror on Exoplanet HD 189733b

This Halloween, take a tour with NASA's Exoplanet Exploration site of some of the most terrifying destinations in our galaxy. The nightmare world of HD 189733 b is the killer you never see coming. To the human eye, this far-off planet looks bright blue. But any space traveler confusing it with the friendly skies of Earth would be badly mistaken.

Photo Credit: NASA

Aurora and Manicouagan Crater

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station adjusted the camera for night imaging and captured the green veils and curtains of an aurora that spanned thousands of kilometers over Quebec, Canada.

Photo Credit: NASA

Paris at Night

Around local midnight time on April 8, 2015, astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of Paris, often referred to as the City of Light. The pattern of the street grid dominates at night, providing a completely different set of visual features from those visible during the day.

Photo Credit: NASA

Stargazing From the International Space Station

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) see the world at night on every orbit thats 16 times each crew day. An astronaut took this broad, short-lens photograph of Earths night lights while looking out over the remote reaches of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Photo Credit: NASA

Election Day 2016

Thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislators that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts, they have the ability to vote from space through specially designed absentee ballots. To preserve the integrity of the secret vote, the ballot is encrypted and only accessible by the astronaut and the county clerk responsible for casting it.

Photo Credit: NASA

Fiery South Atlantic Sunset

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a sunset that looks like a vast sheet of flame. With Earths surface already in darkness, the setting sun, the cloud masses, and the sideways viewing angle make a powerful image of the kind that astronauts use to commemorate their flights.

Photo Credit: NASA

Ring Details on Display

This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft showcases some of the amazingly detailed structure of Saturn's rings.

Photo Credit: NASA

Hubble Takes Flight with the Toucan and the Cluster

NGC 299 is an open star cluster located within the Small Magellanic Cloud just under 200,000 light-years away.

Photo Credit: NASA

Hubble Spies Spiral Galaxy

Spiral galaxy NGC 3274 is a relatively faint galaxy located over 20 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion).

Photo Credit: NASA

Practicing Orion Spacecraft Recovery After Splashdown

A group of U.S. Navy divers, Air Force pararescuemen and Coast Guard rescue swimmers practice Orion underway recovery techniques in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASAs Johnson Space Center to prepare for the first test flight of an uncrewed Orion spacecraft with the agencys Space Launch System rocket during Exploration Mission (EM-1).

Photo Credit: NASA

A Trio of Plumes in the South Sandwich Islands

On September 29, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Aqua satellite captured this false-color image (MODIS bands 7-2-1) showing volcanic activity in the South Sandwich Islands. Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, the uninhabited South Sandwich Islands include several active stratovolcanoes.

Photo Credit: NASA

Infrared Echoes of a Black Hole Eating a Star

This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star, disrupted as it was being devoured by a supermassive black hole. The feeding black hole is surrounded by a ring of dust. This dust was previously illuminated by flares of high-energy radiation from the feeding black hole, and is now shown re-radiating some of that energy.

Photo Credit: NASA

Hubble Views a Colorful Demise of a Sun-like Star

This star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core.

Credit: NASA

Infrared Saturn Clouds

This false-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows clouds in Saturn's northern hemisphere. The view was made using images taken by Cassini's wide-angle camera on July 20, 2016, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to infrared light at 750, 727 and 619 nanometers.

Photo credit: NASA

Moonset Viewed From the International Space Station

Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Tim Peake of ESA took this striking photograph of the moon from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station on March 28, 2016. Peake shared the image on March 30 and wrote to his social media followers, "I was looking for #Antarctica hard to spot from our orbit. Settled for a moonset instead."

Photo credit: NASA

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"You have the opportunity to provide clear direction to our nation's space program," Nye said. "The advances and discoveries made on your watch could be historic."

Nye emphasized that the country should maintain its focus on Mars, saying that the U.S. could have humans on the red planet in 15 years.

"We strongly recommend," Nye said. "Let's maintain all of the existing programs: Robotic missions, crew capsules and rocket programs."

SEE ALSO: Something terrifying is happening at the North Pole

Nye urged the president to embrace NASA and all the different jobs the agency provides and said his organization feels the government should increase spending on NASA by five percent each year for the next five years.

Nye's non-governmental space advocacy group previously provided Trump's transition team with a 16-page document on the future of the country's space programs. It is still unclear where the president stands on space exploration and NASA.

The Trump administration has expressed interest in a "rapid" return to the moon and a return to manned missions.

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Bill Nye issues open letter to President Trump about the future of space travel - AOL

Richard "Lord British" Garriott is an Austin icon: Creator of the classic video game "Ultima" and pioneer of the commercial space flight industry.

Garriott wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps, Astronaut Dr. Owen Garriott. But when he was still just a kid, a NASA doctor told him because he needed glasses he wouldn't be eligible.

"You know after going through the 7 stages of grief, I kind of put my mind to it and said 'Hey if I can't go through the rules of NASA I'm going to have to make my own space program," Garriott said.

And that's what he did. Garriott has been to all 7 continents and even down to the Titanic shipwreck. But getting to space was the goal. He started a company called Space Adventures that began to book seats into orbit. In 2008 it was his turn.

2 weeks on the International Space Station. The price tag: $30 million.

"It only takes 8 1/2 minutes to go from sitting still on the ground to burning all the fuel in the vehicle and engines cut off and you're in orbit in space. That's obviously a pinnacle life experience as you might expect," Garriott said. "You see a place you knew well like for me: Austin, Texas. You go like 'Wow there's Lake Travis, there's downtown, there's my house.'"

Elon Musk's company SpaceX recently announced that 2 tourists will be hitching a ride with them and orbiting the moon in late 2018. The company won't say how much the private astronauts are spending but Garriott guesses it's more than $100 million per seat.

"I personally think this is the best thing you can imagine. I think there is nothing at all bad about this," Garriott said.

On the other hand, he's hoping NASA won't decide to land on the moon and spend any time there.

"What NASA does best and what we should always challenge NASA to do is go to new places first," he said.

Garriott says there are good arguments for it. It's practice for setting up a base on Mars...when you're just 3 days away from Earth instead of 9 months. But in this astronaut's opinion, not if we're hoping to get to Mars in this lifetime.

"Is the delay of stopping off at the moon worth it? Is the gain that we would have for increased safety or proving grounds worth the delay that in my mind likely would push getting to Mars outside of our lifetimes and I'm going 'I don't see that much benefit,'" Garriott said.

Garriott says because people like himself and these 2 un-named SpaceX travelers are investing in commercial space-flight, the cost per seat for a trip to the stars will start to go way down.

"I think that we should all be very pleased and happy that we're now to the point where we can put government expeditions to Mars to go to science and commercial expeditions to Mars to bring back value or go start settlements," Garriott said.

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Back to the moon? Austin astronaut Richard Garriott talks space travel with FOX 7 - FOX 7 Austin

Exposure to radiation has always been a concern for those traveling in deep space. However, with thanks to a new type of vest called AstroRad, those concerns may soon be a thing of the past. Its been designed by a team over in Israel and is now ready for use on any manned mission to Mars.

The company behind the AstroRad Radiation Shield is StemRad. Based in Tel Aviv, the company has already produced a belt that protects rescue workers from radiation during nuclear disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl should one ever occur again. Add that to the newly designed vest, and everyones a winner. Mars offers no protection in its sparse atmosphere, so this kind of invention is vital if were really serious about putting people on Mars in the next few years.

The AstroRad consists of several layers of non-metallic materials to shield vital organs, and everyone will be tailor-made for each astronaut. StemRads CEO, Oren Milstein, said, This product will enable human deep space exploration. Our breakthrough has come in creating the architecture of the multi-layered shield to cover the most important organs accurately. Although the vest has already proven itself in simulations and the laboratory, StemRad will also be testing the product out onboard the Orion spacecraft in a joint venture between Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the European Space Agency.

Orion is due to launch late 2018 as an unmanned mission, but NASA is also considering sending two astronauts up on the same mission. During the flight, a dummy will be wearing one of the vests as well as a device to record the amount of radiation the dummy absorbs. Another dummy will travel alongside the one wearing a vest, but this one bare. The pair will be analyzed again upon returning to Earth. StemRads first example of the vest is to start being produced later thus year according to Milstein. He said, Based on our simulations, were sure it works but to be 100 percent sure, were sending it up on EM-1.

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The AstroRad Radiation Shield: The New Protective Vest for Deep Space - TrendinTech

CBS Boston / WBZ

MIT Conference To Focus On Space Travel For The Public CBS Boston / WBZ Participants will discuss making space travel affordable to the public, sharing the cost of space access, and the relationship between private space companies and governments. Speakers will include: Jeffrey Hoffman, a former NASA astronaut who is ... Travel to the Red Planet is the next big biz (ad)ventureBoston Herald all 2 news articles »

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MIT Conference To Focus On Space Travel For The Public - CBS Boston / WBZ

With Congress passing a bill authorizing NASA to prioritize sending humans to Mars, were likely to see some deep space travel in the next two decades. However, we need to consider how to protect astronauts health, since extended space missions increase the risk of developing cancer.

In a study published in the journal Leukemia, researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues further investigated the effects of exposing astronauts to radiation levels present in outer space, and found a greatly increased risk of developing leukemia. This poses as a threat to astronauts, since there currently isnt a way of treating leukemia on board.

That would be physically troubling from the standpoint of astronauts, Christopher Porada, Ph.D., associate professor of regenerative medicine and senior researcher on the project, tells Inverse. These were the first findings to suggest space radiation may have the possibility of inducing leukemia. We are trying to find out what the risk may be.

Researchers used mice transplanted with healthy human stem cells from donors between ages 30 and 55 to study the health risks from space radiation. They found that exposure to these types of radiation over long periods of time causes mutations in certain genes, and these mice ended up developing T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

These mutations would reduce the human hematopoietic stem cells ability to make mature blood cells, which are crucial to transporting oxygen and fighting infections.

A round-trip mission to Mars would take three years, and extended exposure would increase the likelihood of leukemia. Whats more, radiation isnt the only threat to astronauts microgravity conditions also affect astronauts immune systems. That along with radiation raise the risk of immune-dysfunction and cancer.

Previously, scientists had found that the Apollo astronauts are dying from cardiovascular risks four to five times the rate of their counterparts, likely due to deep space radiation. Cosmic radiation can also impair the brain, and its a major obstacle thats preventing us from embarking on longer space missions.

To prepare for deep space missions, scientists must work to estimate the risks from space radiation and identify ways to prevent its effects. Right now, the research team is working to quantify how dangerous the risk of leukemia is, since the human cells they collected were only a small sample. NASA is also working on a galactic cosmic ray simulator to further test the effects of radiation.

Poradas team is currently testing a dietary supplement for its ability to protect astronauts from radiation effects. The researchers have tested an agent and found that if they administer the agent to the cells before, during and after radiation exposure, it reverses the effects of space radiation by 50 to 70 percent. This is still in the works though.

Were going to quantify the risk and find if theres some way to prevent and mitigate the risk, Porada says. Well see if there are counter measures that can be given to the astronauts as a dietary supplement to shield their systems from the radiation theyre exposed to.

Photos via Flickr / NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center

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More Evidence for How a Trip to Mars Will Wreck the Human Body - Inverse

Astronaut Bruce McCandless II floats above Earth, 330 feet (100 meters) from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, in 1984.

NASA's requirements for becoming an astronautare stringent, but not overly daunting. Essentially, hopefuls must have a bachelor's degree in science, be physically fit, and stand between 58.5 and 76 inches tall. What NASA doesn't mention, however, are the intangibles. You can probably think of a few: coolness under pressure, a problem-solving mentality, and the ability to work in a team setting. But one trait you might not consider is a strong stomach. The following stories illustrate why that definitely can come in handy.

The microgravity of space can lead to a lot of disgusting situations. If you think carpet spills are hard to clean, try collecting floating vomit, or desiccated skin.

"The calluses on your feet in space will eventually fall off," astronaut Scott Kelly revealed in aReddit AMA. "So, the bottoms of your feet become very soft like newborn baby feet. But the top of my feet develop rough alligator skin because I use the top of my feet to get around here on space station when using foot rails."

Floating calluses with the potential to enter an unaware, open mouth is enough to irk most people, but that's not the worst of it. Take whathappened during STS-1, for example.

In April 1981, astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen piloted the Space Shuttle Columbia successfully through its maiden mission, but not without a few hitches. The toilet clogged early on, forcing the two crewmembers to usefecal containment systems,long, tube-shaped bags affixed to the buttocks with a sticky seal to trap, and store, evacuated feces. Even worse, during re-entry, vacuum-dried fecal matter from the broken, bloated toilet migrated to the ventilation system and entered the main cabin. Young and Crippen survived the poop particles and soldiered through the *ick* factor in professional fashion.

Fecal containment systems were a brief inconvenience during STS-1, but they were business as usual during the Apollo missions. The clunky apparatuses were far from foolproof, especially in microgravity. During Apollo 10, when Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan, and John Young orbited the Moon, it seems a few "turds" may have eluded containment. Alan Boyleuncovered the smelly situationwhilst reviewing the declassified mission logs, and brought it to light over atNBC's Cosmic Log:

"Give me a napkin, quick," Stafford says. "There's a turd floating through the air."

"I didn't do it," Young says. "It ain't one of mine."

"I don't think it's one of mine," Cernan says.

"Mine was a little more sticky than that," Stafford replies. "Throw that away."

The astronauts discuss the finer points of waste disposal in space, and then move on to other business. But minutes later, it's "Houston, we have a problem" all over again.

"Here's another goddam turd," Cernan says. "What's the matter with you guys?"

Thanks to futuristicvacuum toiletsand well-designed filtration systems, escaped turds are no longer an issue. In fact, the International Space Station is "many, many times cleaner than your bathroom at home," Astrobiologist Kasthuri Venkateswaran,told theWashington Post.

Good news for aspiring astronauts who are easily grossed out!

Original article on RealClearScience.

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Why Space Travel Can Be Absolutely Disgusting - Live Science

Fast radio bursts (FRB) are perhaps the most mysterious phenomena we observe in the cosmos. Earlier this year, astronomers announced they had pinpointed an FRB for the first time in a dwarf galaxy that sits three billion light-years away. These intense blasts of radio waves last only 1 to 5 milliseconds, and they have perplexed astronomers since the first one was discovered in 2007.

The leading theories suggest that FRBs come from incredibly volatile cosmic events, such as material being ejected from supermassive black holes, the explosions of superluminous supernovae, or rotating magnetars that lash surrounding material with their immense magnetic fields. But researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have proposed a much more enticing theory. What if FRBs aren't natural phenomena at all, but rather come from a massive artificial structure used to power alien spacecraft?

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"Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a possible natural source with any confidence," said Harvard professor Avi Loeb in a press release. "An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking."

The idea is that FRBs come from an immense alien power plant that is used to propel ships using light sails. A powerful beam of light can propel a reflective surface in the vacuum of space, which is the basis for light sail technology. Current human light sail experiments use light from the sun, but scientists are also working to develop a worldwide system of lasers that could propel small nanoprobes to about 20 percent the speed of light. Such technology, called photonic propulsion, could send a probe to Alpha Centauri, the closet star system to us, in roughly 20 years.

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It's possible that a more advanced alien species uses photonic propulsion to power much larger spaceships. Loeb and fellow Harvard researcher Manasvi Lingam found that if an object twice the size of the Earth were harnessing solar power and converting the energy into a laser beam to propel spacecraft, then the radio emissions from it would be detectable even across billions of light-years. Such a planet-sized power system would be capable of accelerating a spaceship weighing a million tons, which is about 20 times bigger than the biggest cruise ships.

"That's big enough to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances," says Lingam.

The team's findings are outlined in a paper titled, "Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails," which has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. To accelerate a spaceship's light sail, the device would need to constantly aim its beams of light at the craft. On Earth, we would see this from time to time as a quick flash of high intensity radio waves rather than a sustained signal because the movement of distant galaxies and planets means the laser would only line up with our planet for a split second.

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The fast radio burst that we located earlier this year actually was detected nine times over the course of six months, which, if the signal is coming from an alien power plant, could be an indication that the device lines up with us regularly, or we could be seeing the planet-sized laser system being switched on and off.

Of course, this is all highly speculative theory. The new study simply outlines the fact that it is possible that FRBs are from an alien propulsion system according to our current laws of physics. Our species is nowhere near achieving such advanced technology, but perhaps a more advanced race has unlocked large-scale interstellar travel.

Loeb was asked whether he really believes FRBs come from an advanced alien civilization, to which he responded: "Science isn't a matter of belief, it's a matter of evidence. Deciding what's likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It's worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge."

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

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Harvard Scientists Theorize That Fast Radio Bursts Come From Alien Space Travel - Popular Mechanics