Category Archives: Space Travel

Kellie Gerardi, a Jupiter native, will test products as a 'citizen' space traveler aboard a flight that costs around $600,000.

Space tourism: Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk racing to stars

The newest space race features billionaires who are investing in commercial space tourism.

STAFF VIDEO, USA TODAY

JUPITER, Fla. When people told Kellie Gerardi to shoot for the stars, they didn't think she'd be so literal about it.

But she took it seriously, and the 32-year-old woman fromJupiter, Florida, is heading to space.

Gerardi will be aboard a future spaceflight on the VSS Unity outofNew Mexico operated by Virgin Galactic as part of her role as abioastronautics researcher with the International Institue for Astronautical Sciences.

The Unity's initial launch took place Sunday, carrying Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and five others to the edge of space.The company has plans for two more test flights before commercial service is expected to begin in 2022.

The details of Gerardi'sresearch mission are still under wraps, like the date and exactly where the flight will go, but shesaid she doesn't have an ounce of nervousness about the trip.

"I'm so excited, and so ready to fly," she told The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network, via email.

Aside from her work as an aerospace, defense and technology professional, Gerardi has also gainedsocial media popularity as an influencerand science communicatoron TikTok and Instagram, where she publishes content about her work and family, including details about the upcoming launch.

'It was just magical': Virgin Galactic space plane carrying Richard Branson reaches edge of space, returns safely

When Gerardi was growing up, she had plenty of access to rocket launches that piqued her interest in space travel, having been raised just a few hours from Cape Canaveral.But she said it wasn't until she became an adult that she realized she could be a part of it.

Gerardi said she first became involved with The Explorers Club, a group founded in New York in 1904 to promote scientific exploration and field study. She thenconnected with networks of people trying to open commercial access to space.

She started working with the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a private spaceflight industry group headquartered in Washington, D.C., first in communications and then business development of companies like Virgin Galactic.

She considers herself a citizen scientist who represents a "new breed" of astronaut. Gerardihas studied bioastronautics throughtheInternational Institute for Astronautical Sciences, a citizen-science institute based in Boulder, Colorado, that specializes in space-related fields.

"I'm excited to help ensure that this becomes a consistent pipeline of researchers flying to space with their experiments," she said.

As a payload specialist, Gerardi will carry multiple experiments with her on her flight.

One is a biomonitoring experiment using a wearable sensor system developed by Montreal-basedCarr Technologies. The sensor system is a "smart undershirt" outfitted with sensors designed to measure the biological effects of spaceflight on humans.

The Astroskin sensor system currently is being used on the International Space Station, where it helps monitor the effects of microgravity on ISS astronauts, Gerardi said.

"My spaceflight will be the first time well be able to collect data during launch, re-entry, and landing, though, so Im excited to contribute to that novel data collection," she said.

Gerardi isn't just interested in space in her professional life. She's obsessed with the final frontier at home, too.

One of the most exciting parts of her trip is the ability to share the news with her husband, Steven, and their 3-year-old daughter, Delta Victoria, whose name is a nod to theDelta-Vsymbol used in spaceflight dynamics.

"I get emotional when I think about what it means for her to watch me, her mommy, become an astronaut," Gerardi said. "In Deltas mind, flying to space is just another thing moms do. Shes going to grow up knowing that not even the sky is a limit. That mental framework is something I wish for all children."

Gerardi's flight will be historic in another way: She'll be the first female payload specialist to travel to space with Virgin Galactic.

"Less than 100 women in history, and only a handful of moms,have ever flown to space," Gerardi said. "And I really believe representation matters."

As she joins the likes of Sally Ride and Kathleen Rubins, Gerardi said she hopes to continue the push to "democratize space" for people beyondgovernment-trained astronauts.

"I want to see people from all backgrounds experience spaceflight. I think humanity will be better off for it," she said. "To me, the Space Age is a broader cultural movement, and our next giant leap will require the contributions of artists, engineersand everyone in between."

Follow Katherine Kotal on Twitter:@katikokal

Read more from the original source:

A 'new breed' of astronaut: Meet the citizen space traveler who'll be on Virgin Galactic's next flight - USA TODAY

This past weekend, billionaire Richard Branson fulfilled his childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut. His venture, Virgin Galactic, aims to bring space travel to the public and the trip marked the debut of an optimistic future for space tourism.

The Unity 22 mission carried a six-person crew including two pilots, three researchers and Branson himself in ab id to evaluate the customer experience of such a trip. Virgin Galactics SpaceShipTwo completed an airlaunch from 50,000 feet above Spaceport America in New Mexico. The craft then ascended to nearly 300,000 feet for the climax or apogee phase of the trip, before returning to Earth and landing on a runway.

Although Branson is not leading this new era of space travel alone, Unity 22 is the first commercial spaceflight mission bringing private astronauts to the edge of space to experience weightlessness and a heightened view of our planet. With other billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos also setting their sights on the next frontier for humankind, many are concerned about the long-term environmental impacts of these expeditions.

The 21st century space cannon has fired and innovators are racing towards an interstellar future for humans. As technologies emerge and develop, visionaries and policymakers are entering unexplored entrepreneurial territory. It is incumbent on the trailblazers to decide what constitutes a worthwhile expenditure of Earths resources in pursuit of space travel. While some seek cosmic capital, others are merely trying to extend the half-life of the human race.

Bezos founded his own aerospace company in 2000 called Blue Origin, which is to launch its first human crew into space July 20. Their mission statement reads:

In order to preserve Earth, Blue Origin believes that humanity will need to expand, explore, find new energy and material resources, and move industries that stress Earth into space.

Next week, Bezos will board the New Shepard spacecraft joined by his brother, and once overlooked female astronaut, Wally Funk. The mission will bring the organization one step closer to fulfilling its founding vision of tapping into galactic space assets.

On the other side of the launchpad, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is working to colonize Mars, thereby making humans a multi-planetary species.

You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great and thats what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. Its about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I cant think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.

Musks SpaceX, has been making strides in the innovation of reusable rockets and self-landing technology. The company has launched 127 rockets since its founding and has successfully delivered private astronauts to the International Space Station.

Virtuous philosophies and paths guiding humans towards the stars have been laid out by the first entrepreneurs but many possibilities and applications of these new technologies have yet to be imagined.

Though many dreams of becoming astronauts may be fulfilled by this space-tech boom, some researchers are raising concerns regarding the environmental costs entailed.

The annual carbon footprint of rockets has never compared to that of planes, but the possibility for their mass private use is bound to make the contrast less insignificant. Space tourism poses a danger to the ozone layer, because of the huge amount of fuel burned to reach space, Eloise Marais, an associate professor of physical geography at University College London, said in a recent interview.

Soot from burnt fuel is not washed out of the atmosphere at the extreme altitudes where these spacecraft fly. Researchers say different fuels are more harmful to Earths atmosphere, but there are no regulations on the use of the most environmentally toxic options. Virgin Galactics use of solid polyamide fuel is more threatening to the ozone layer than a fuel type like SpaceX Starships liquid methane and oxygen combination.

Space scene has a fundamental need for self-directed ethical innovation while legislatures scramble to catch up to those who have already launched.

While the race for the stars has begun, minimal headway is being made in the necessary reorganization of governments and societies to keep up.

Read the original post:

Rocket men: Unregulated space travel posing a threat to the fragile environment of the blue planet - capitalcurrent.ca

The space travel calculator is a comprehensive tool that allows you to estimate many essential parameters in theoretical interstellar space travel. Have you ever wondered how fast can we travel in space, how much time will it take to get to the nearest star or galaxy, or how much fuel does it require? In the following article, we'll try to answer questions is interstellar travel possible? and can humans travel at the speed of light? using a relativistic rocket equation. Explore the world of light speed travel of (hopefully) future spaceships with our relativistic space travel calculator!

If you're interested in astrophysics, check out our other calculators. Find out the speed required to leave the surface of any planet with the escape velocity calculator or estimate the parameters of the orbital motion of planets using the orbital velocity calculator.

Interstellar space is a rather empty place. Its temperature is not much more than the coldest possible temperature, i.e., an absolute zero. It equals about 3 Kelvins - minus 270 C or minus 455 F. You can't find air there, and therefore there is no drag or friction. On one hand, humans can't survive in such a hostile place without expensive equipment like a spacesuit or a spaceship, but on the other hand, we can make use of space conditions and its emptiness.

The main advantage of future spaceships is that, since they are moving through a vacuum, they can theoretically accelerate to infinite speeds! However, this is only possible in the classical world of relatively low speeds where Newtonian physics can be applied. Even if it's true, let's imagine, just for a moment, that we live in a world where any speed is allowed. How long will it take to visit the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way?

We will begin our intergalactic travel with a constant acceleration of 1 g (9.81 m/s or 32.17 ft/s) because it ensures that crew experiences the same comfortable gravitational field as the one on Earth. By using this space travel calculator in Newton's universe mode, you can find out that you need about 2200 years to arrive at the nearest galaxy! And, if you want to stop there, you need an additional 1000 years. Nobody lives for 3000 years! Is intergalactic travel impossible for us, then? Luckily, we have good news. We live in a world of relativistic effects where unusual phenomena readily occur.

In the previous example, where we traveled to Andromeda Galaxy, the maximum velocity was almost 3000 times greater than the speed of light c = 299,792,458 m/s, or about c = 3 * 10 m/s using scientific notation. You can always use our speed converter to find its value in any other speed units.

However, as velocity increases, relativistic effects start to play an essential role. According to special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein, nothing can exceed the speed of light. How can it help us with interstellar space travel? Doesn't it mean we will travel at a much lower speed? Yes, it does, but there are also few new relativistic phenomena, including time dilation and length contraction to name a few. The former is crucial in relativistic space travel. Time dilation is a difference of time measured by two observers, one being in motion and second at rest (relative to each other). It is something we are not used to on Earth. Clocks in a moving spaceship tick slower than the same clocks on Earth! Time passing in a moving spaceship T and equivalent time observed on Earth t are related by the following formula:

T = * t,

where is the Lorentz factor that comprises the speed of the spaceship v and speed of light c:

= 1/(1 - ) = 1/(1 - v/c),

where = v/c.

For example, if = 10 (v = 0.995c), then every second passing on Earth corresponds to ten seconds passing in the spaceship. Inside the spaceship, events take place 90 percent slower; the difference can be even greater for higher velocities. Note that both observers can be in motion, too. In that case, to calculate the relative relativistic velocity, you can use our velocity addition calculator.

Let's go back to our example again, but this time we're in Einstein's universe of relativistic effects trying to reach Andromeda. The time needed to get there measured by the crew of the spaceship equals only 15 years! Well, this is still a long time, but is more achievable in a practical sense. If you would like to stop at the destination, you should start decelerating halfway through. In this situation, the time passed in the spaceship will be extended by about 13 additional years.

Unfortunately, this is only a one-way journey. You can, of course, go back to Earth but nothing will be the same. During your interstellar space travel to the Andromeda Galaxy, about 2,500,000 years have passed on Earth. It would be a completely different planet, and nobody can foresee the fate of our civilization. A similar problem was considered in the first Planet of the Apes movie, where astronauts crash landed back on Earth. While these astronauts had only aged by 18 months, 2000 years had passed on Earth (sorry for the spoilers, but the film is over 50 years old at this point, you should have seen it by now). How about you? Would you be able to leave everything you know and love about our galaxy forever, and begin a life of space exploration?

Now that you know whether interstellar is travel possible and how fast can we travel in space, it's time for some formulas. In this section, you can find the "classical" and relativistic rocket equations that are included in the relativistic space travel calculator. There could be four combinations since we want to estimate how long it takes to arrive at the destination point at full speed as well as arrive at the destination point and stop. Every set contains distance, time passing on Earth and in the spaceship (only relativity approach), expected maximum velocity and corresponding kinetic energy (if you turn on the advanced mode), and the required fuel mass (see Intergalactic travel - fuel problem section for more information). The notation is:

Relativistic space travel calculator is dedicated to very long journeys, interstellar or even intergalactic, in which we can neglect the influence of the gravitational field, e.g., from Earth. We didn't include in destination list our closest celestial bodies like Moon or Mars, because it would be pointless. For them, we need different equations that also take into consideration gravitational force.

Newton's universe - arrive at destination at full speed

It's the simplest case because here T equals t for any speed. To calculate distance covered, at constant acceleration during a certain time, you can use the following classical formula:

d = 1/2 * a * t.

Since acceleration is constant and we assume that the initial velocity equals zero, you can estimate the maximum velocity using this equation:

v = a * t,

and the corresponding kinetic energy:

KE = m * v / 2.

Newton's universe - arrive at destination and stop

In this situation, we're accelerating to the half-way point, reaching maximum velocity and then decelerating to stop at the destination point. Distance covered during the same time is, as you may expect, smaller than before:

d = 1/4 * a * t.

Acceleration remains positive until we're half-way there (then it is negative - deceleration), so the maximum velocity is:

v = a * t/2,

and the kinetic energy equation is the same as the previous one.

Einstein's universe - arrive at destination at full speed

The relativistic rocket equation has to consider the effects of light speed travel. These are not only speed limitations and time dilation, but also how every length becomes shorter for a moving observer which is a phenomenon of special relativity called length contraction. If l is the proper length observed in rest frame and L is length observed by a crew in a spaceship, then:

L = l / .

What does it mean? If spaceship moves with the velocity of v = 0.995c, then = 10 and the length observed by a moving object is ten times smaller than the real length. For example, the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy equals about 2,520,000 light years with Earth as the frame of reference. For a spaceship moving with v = 0.995c, it will be "only" 252,200 light years away. That's a 90 percentage decrease or 164 percentage difference!

Now you probably understand why special relativity allows us for intergalactic travel. Below you can find relativistic rocket equation for the case in which you want to arrive at destination point at full speed (without stopping). You can find its derivation in the book by Messrs Misner, Thorne (Co-Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics) and Wheller titled Gravitation, section 6.2. Hyperbolic motion. More accessible formulas are in the mathematical physicist's, John Baez, article The Relativistic Rocket:

t = c/a * sh[a*T/c] = [(d/c) + 2*d/a],

T = c/a * sh[a*t/c] = c/a * ch[a*d/c + 1],

d = c/a * [ch(a*T/c) - 1] = c/a * [(1 + (a*t/c)) - 1],

v = c * th[a*T/c] = a*t / [1 + (a*t/c)],

EK = mc * ( - 1)

The symbols sh, ch and th are respectively sine, cosine, and tangent hyperbolic functions, which are analogs of the ordinary trigonometric functions. In turn, sh and ch are the inverse hyperbolic functions that can be expressed with natural logarithms and square roots according to the article Inverse hyperbolic functions on Wikipedia.

Einstein's universe - arrive at destination point and stop

Most websites with relativistic rocket equations consider only arriving at desired place at full speed. If you want to stop there, you should start decelerating at the halfway point. Here, you can find set of equation estimating interstellar space travel parameters in situation when you want to stop at destination point:

t = 2*c/a * sh[a*T/(2*c)] = [(d/c) + 4*d/a],

T = 2*c/a * sh[a*t/(2*c)] = 2*c/a * ch[a*d/(2*c) + 1],

d = 2*c/a * [ch(a*T/(2*c)) - 1] = 2*c/a * [(1 + (a*t/(2*c))) - 1],

v = c * th[a*T/(2*c)] = a*t / (2 * [1 + (a*t/(2*c))]),

EK = mc * ( - 1)

So after all of these considerations, can humans travel at the speed of light, or at least at a speed close to it? Jet-rocket engines, used e.g. by NASA, taught us that rockets need a lot of fuel per unit of weight of the rocket. You can use our rocket equation calculator to see how much fuel you need to obtain a certain velocity (e.g., with an effective exhaust velocity of 4500 m/s).

Hopefully future spaceships will be able to produce energy from the matter-antimatter annihilation. This process releases energy from two particles that have mass (e.g., electron and positron) into photons. These photons may be then shot out at the back of the spaceship, and accelerate the spaceship due to the conservation of momentum. If you want to know how much energy is contained in matter, check out our E = mc calculator which is about the famous Albert Einstein equation.

Now that you know the maximum amount of energy you can acquire from matter, it's time to estimate how much of it you need for intergalactic travel. Appropriate formulas are derived from conservation of momentum and energy principles. For the relativistic case:

M = m * (exp(a*T/c) - 1),

where exp(x) is an exponential function, and for classical case:

M = m*v / (2*c) + m*v / c.

Remember that it assumes 100% efficiency! One of the promising future spaceships sources of power is the fusion of hydrogen into helium which provides energy of 0.008 mc. As you can see, in this reaction, efficiency equals only 0.8%.

Let's check whether fuel mass amount is reasonable for sending a mass of 1 kg to the nearest galaxy. With space travel calculator you can find out that, even with 100% efficiency, you would need 5,200 tons of fuel to send only 1 kilogram of your spaceship. That's a lot! So can humans travel at the speed of light? Right now it seems impossible, but technology is still developing. For example, photonic laser thruster is a good candidate since it doesn't require any matter to work, only photons. Infinite and beyond is actually within our reach!

The rest is here:

Space Travel Calculator | Relativistic Rocket Equation

You will know more about space travel after reading and understanding this part of the journey. Since the early part of the 20th century and even before scientists have been trying to discover how space travel would be possible.In the late 20th century after much research and testing, space travel has become a reality.Year after yearthrough advances in technology humans are making major advances in space travel.

How we get to anywhere we can possibly get to in space is by specially built rockets, using rocket power. There are many different things that are sent into space by rockets. We send people into space on these speciality rockets thesepeople that train all their lives for this are called Astronauts or Cosmonauts, but we can only send people so far into space before their lives come into danger.

So before space rockets were ever invented, we needed to understand how space travel could work and how people could spend periods of time in space without it becoming dangerous.

We needed to put a lot of time, effort and energy into educating people to create and use telescopes to firstly explore the skies from Earth before we would get to the point where we coulduse rockets to take people into space to further explore, even if we have up until now reached only a small distance of space outside of Earth compared to the size of the universe.

We will go into more detail ina different section about space travelon telescopes and how telescopes were invented to aid space exploration, however let usdelve further into the endless possibilities of space travel.

It is very difficult to explain all the concepts of space travel without being an expert on space, so that is why the people in space agencies like NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) spend their entire work lives figuring things like this out. So, rather than getting you all tangled up with this, let ussimply explain space travel.

This is generally how space travel works, it is way more complicated than how its explained simply here on this website. You should however get an understanding of the concepts of space travel as we know it now.

Kids Fun Facts Corner

# 1. In order to understand if humans could travel and survive in space, scientists first sent animals.

# 2. The average journey time for a space shuttle to reach space from Earth is around 8 minutes.

# 3. Space starts at 62 miles above the Earth.

# 4. There is no sound in space because there is little to no air in space.

Q&A Corner

Q. When was space travel first thought of?

Q. What is the name of the thingattached to the rocket that breaks off after launch?

Q. What is the name of the thing attached to the shuttle that makes the space landing?

Q. What is the name of the agency inthe USAthat focuses on space travel?

Q. How far in miles is space from Earth?

Download questions aboutspace travelhere: space travel(answers are on this page)

For further reading and more information onspace travelvisit http://www.easyscienceforkids.com/space travel

If you like this post and article on space travel,check out article on howtelescopes work in space and what amazing things have been discovered in space be reading space telescope discoveries You can learn more about space telescopes at https://telescopicwatch.com/

Key VocabularyAstronauts. Cosmonauts. Telescopes. Rockets.

More:

Fun Space Travel Facts for Kids

To travel into the unknown of space is a dream for so many children and adults alike, although one that very few will ever reach.

Throughout time so many countries, and now private companies, across the world have tried to create a method of getting in amongst the stars.

Its even united countries that previously had such strong conflict.

Here were going to go through a timeline of the significant moments in the history of space travel, starting way back in the 1940s.

In 1942 the German V2 rocket, designed by Wernher Von Braun, was the first to reach 100km (62 miles) from the Earths surface.

Also known as the boundary of space.

Braun later worked with NASA on the rockets that went to the moon.

In 1947, the first animals went into space.

Fruit flies were used to study the effects of space travel on animals as theyre very similar to humans.

The flies traveled with a supply of corn to eat on the flight.

Albert II was the first monkey in space.

Albert II was a Rhesus monkey and boldly went where no primate had been before on June 14, 1949, in a specially adapted US V2 rocket, that flew 83 miles from Earth.

On October 4, 1957, Russia launched the first space satellite (or sputnik in Russian) named Sputnik 1.

Sputnik 1 was the first satellite in orbit around the earth.

In November the same year, Laika the Russian dog became the first animal to orbit the earth. Laika is Russian for Barker.

She traveled in Sputnik 2 and helped understand whether people could survive in space.

By 1959 Both US and Russian scientists were in a race to get a craft to the Moon; the Russians won.

Space-probe Luna 2 crash-landed into the moon at fatal speeds.

Ten years later, the first human visited the surface.

On April 12, 1961, Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.

Traveling in Vostok 1 he completed one orbit of the earth, landing about two hours after launch.

Gagarin had to eject and use a parachute to land as the craft was designed to crash land.

John Glenn became the first US man to orbit the Earth aboard the Friendship 7.

John actually chose this name; officially the craft is called the Mercury-Atlas 6, for the mission Mercury and it being the 6th flight to use the faster Atlas rocket.

Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian cosmonaut, became the first woman in space.

After her mission, she had a crater on the far side of the Moon is named after her.

Who could believe, after just sending men to the moon, NASA managed to successfully conduct the first Mars flyby with their Mariner 4 craft.

In 1963 John F. Kennedy promised that by 1970 the US would have put men on the moon.

NASA firstly sent a robot spaceship called Surveyor 1, to make sure they could safely land.

It reached the moon on May 30, 1966, just after the Russian probe Luna 9.

Once Surveyor 1 landed it took photographs and sent them back to eagerly awaiting scientists who used them to visualize the terrain and work out a plan to land people on the moon safely.

On July 20, 1969, the famous one small step was taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and the first words were spoken, the Eagle has landed.

This iconic phrase confirmed them as the first men on the moon.

The Apollo 11 craft flew them 250,000 miles to the moon and back.

Apollo 13 on April 13, 1970, the second day of its trip to the moon, suffered a wiring fault causing an explosion.

Using what was on board, NASA and the astronauts on board made repairs to bring the damaged craft back to Earth.

This saw the first use of the Lunar Rover, an electric vehicle with a top speed of 8 mph (13 kph), to explore the moon on the fourth, fifth and sixth Apollo missions.

The rover took Boeing 17 months to design and develop.

The first-ever space station was launched in 1971, the Russian Salyut 1, and was launched from an unmanned rocket.

In 1973 Mars 2, a 2-part Russian probe explored Mars.

One part was to stay in orbit for the whole year sending pictures back to earth and the other was to land and explore Mars surface.

It was destroyed when a parachute failed.

The US launched their Voyager 1 deep space probe.

Voyager 1, on February 17, 1998, became the most distant human-made object in space after it passed the previous title holder; Pioneer 10.

From April 12, 1981, saw the idea of reusable space crafts, prior to this they were a one-hit-wonder.

The Space Shuttle was designed to lower costs and could be used up to 100 times.

With five rocket motors, it reached 17,000+ mph (27,350+ Kph). Six were built and 2011 saw their last use.

The first craft to start the Space Shuttle era was called Columbia.

On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger exploded due to a fuel system failure just after launch.

All seven astronauts were killed.

After this tragedy, all shuttles were grounded for almost three years.

In the same year, Construction started on the MIR space station, the first consistently inhabited long-term space station.

It was built in sections, taking 10 years, with each bit rocket-launched and combined in orbit.

In 2001 it was destroyed on its descent to earth. The ISS or International Space station also started construction in this year designed for research and space exploration.

The final major module of the ISS didnt arrive until 2010.

The shuttle Discovery was launched to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope into Earths Orbit.

The telescope is able to lock onto a target without moving to about the width of a human hair seen a mile away, or more scientifically, more than 7/1000th of an arcsecond.

Just like there are 60 minutes in an hour, there are 60 arcminutes in 1 degree, and 60 arcseconds in an arcminute.

In 1989, Helen Sharman won a competition to become the first British astronaut in space, she previously worked for Mars Bar.

After 18 months of harsh training, she joined a Russian mission to the MIR space station.

After all their problems, the US and Russia finally start working together, or at least in space terms they were.

This year saw the US shuttle Atlantis dock at the Russian MIR space station.

The first look at mars occurred when Sojourner, A U.S rover, travels onto Mars to explore the planets geology.

In 2000 the first permanent crew inhabited the International Space Station (ISS), and have been there ever since.

On April 28, 2001, US millionaire Dennis Tito spent around $20,000,000 and had 900 hours of training to be the first space tourist for a ride in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

He spent one week in orbit and of this time he spent most visiting the ISS.

This symbolized the hopes for space travel, for it to become a normal venture one day for everyone.

On June 21, 2004, the first privately funded manned space flight happened with the craft SpaceShipOne.

An adaptation of this technology is being used by Virgin Galactic, a company offering private tourist flights into space.

Even though in 2014 it crashed during testing, flights are still happening.

In this year, the European Space Agency launched their Rosetta probe hoping to reach Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko.

SpaceX, a private company that built a craft to replace the newly retired Space Shuttle, became the first to launch a privately funded liquid-fueled rocket into Orbit, the Falcon 1.

These rockets are used to launch their Dragon capsule, a remote-controlled capsule that takes supplies to the ISS.

The U.S Messenger mission to Mercury, launched in 2004, made its journey successfully traveling 48 million miles (77 million km), to begin its yearlong orbit of the mysterious planet.

Russia launched the largest space telescope to date named Spekt-R beating the Hubble.

The device is built to study astronomical objects with an angular resolution of a few millionths of an arcsecond.

The colossal telescope weighed 11,000 pounds (5,000 kilograms).

A major moment for commercial space travel started on May 22nd, SpaceX launched another Dragon C2+ powered by their Falcon 9 rocket to deliver a resupplying capsule to the ISS.

The capsule was caught by the ISSs robotic arm and docked for nearly six days while astronauts removed cargo and loaded that destined for Earth, a trip it made with no real complications.

NASAs Curiosity rover, a piece of equipment the size of a car, landed on Mars on August 6th.

Its the largest and most advanced rover ever to land on the red planet.

On August 25th, Voyager 1, launched in the late 70s, became the first man-made spacecraft to cross into interstellar space.

The Rosetta probe, launched in 2004, finally reached Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko after a 4 billion-mile journey.

Whilst on the comet, the lander sent data and high-resolution images from the Comets surface back to earth including 490-foot cliffs and house-sized boulders.

The Philae lander made a soft landing on November 12th after a perilous 7-hour descent.

Harpoons designed to attach to the comet failed, and the lander bounced twice before landing successfully.

On March 6th, NASAs Dawn spacecraft entered an orbit around a dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

With a 590 mile (950 km) diameter, it makes up a quarter of the mass of the belt.

July 14th saw NASAs New Horizons spacecraft arrive at Pluto after traveling 9 years and 4.6 billion miles.

It passes, during its closest approach, only 7,750 miles from the surface and took high-resolution photos of Pluto and Charon, the largest moon.

Pluto is said to be about 50 miles larger than thought.

See more here:

The History of Space Travel Timeline | The Fact Site

For perhaps the first time, the humans inside a spacecraft will in a strict financial sense be worth more than the vehicle itself, as billionaires take to the skies this month in a pair of historic suborbital spaceflights that mark a dramatic change in what it takes to become an astronaut.

On July 11, British business magnate Richard Branson will strap himself into the cabin of the spaceplane VSS Unity, along with three employees of his space tourism company Virgin Galactic. Just over a week later, on July 20, in a move timed to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of Americans first landing on the moon, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will climb into a New Shepard capsule as a passenger on the first crewed flight conducted by his company, Blue Origin.

Neither flight will last long each billionaire will slip out of gravity's clutches for a scant handful of minutes. But taken together, the two jaunts into suborbital space may usher in a new era of spaceflight and spaceflyers alike.

"I think the definition of 'astronaut' is up for grabs again right now," Jordan Bimm, a space historian at the University of Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, told Space.com. "What isn't changing is that space remains an incredibly elite space. It's just a different pathway there."

And however the idea of an astronaut changes moving forward, the role will retain flavors of the astronauts who have flown to date, affected by both the military aura of the Cold War astronaut and the scientific agenda of the space station researcher, he said. "It's not like it sheds those identities each time," Bimm said. "It builds on them, like an extra coat of paint on an old wall."

Related: How to watch Virgin Galactic launch Richard Branson to spacePhotos: The first space tourists

For both billionaires, the path to space began more than a decade ago, when each already-established entrepreneur founded a company aimed at spaceflight.

Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, and the company has always focused on suborbital passenger flights of a piloted space plane launched from a larger carrier plane. The first commercial flight was originally targeted to occur as early as 2008, but the company faced a host of delays, including a fatal accident in 2014.

Virgin Galactic only flew its first passenger, the company's chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, in 2019. Since then, the company's plans for launching a full cabin of passengers have again faced delays. But Branson has made no bones about planning to be on Virgin Galactic's first operational trip, saying as early as 2013 that he intended to be on the flight.

Bezos kept his flight intentions quieter, although he's long spoken publicly about watching the Apollo moon landing in 1969 and wanting to visit space himself. He founded Blue Origin in 2000, and the company's vision began with vertical launches on a reusable rocket to suborbital space. (The company has since announced a planned orbital system as well.)

Blue Origin had dreams of launching commercial suborbital flights perhaps as early as 2010, but has so far stuck to 15 uncrewed launches, including one during which company employees rehearsed entering and exiting the capsule but were not on board during the flight.

Although Branson and Bezos will be the first to have funded the vehicle they will fly on, they won't be the first to buy their way into space. Seven passengers hitched rides to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules in the 2000s on flights booked through Space Adventures, a Virginia-based space tourism company. The trips, which cost tens of millions of dollars, included a weeklong stay on the orbiting laboratory and meant facing the indignities of trying to sleep and use the toilet without the help of gravity.

Branson's and Bezos' brief suborbital jaunts will be very different, but they'll need to contend with some of the same hubbub that surrounded those tourism flights about who gets to be an astronaut and what makes an astronaut.

Related: Richard Branson says he isn't racing Jeff Bezos into space with Virgin Galactic launch

Americans have loved astronauts for almost as long as there have been American astronauts, and our idea of an astronaut begins with human spaceflight itself, in the era of the American-Soviet race to space in the late 1950s.

As the United States began its astronaut program, leaders considered a few different models of astronaut. When the Air Force was briefly in charge, it considered sending desk jockeys into orbit, Bimm said, and even NASA briefly opened astronaut applications to everyone, according to Matthew Hersch, a space historian at Harvard University, before limiting the role to military aviators.

And in that first group of astronaut selections, NASA had to face the reality that it didn't know what characteristics would make a successful astronaut.

Related: Will Richard Branson actually reach space on Virgin Galactic launch?

"One of the dirty little secrets of the Project Mercury selection is that the examinations that were undertaken of prospective astronauts were invented just for that selection," Hersch said. "Mostly, the purpose that they served was to test people's willingness to put up with a lot of nonsense in order to be an astronaut."

Once selected, that first corps of test-pilots-turned-astronauts found themselves, with NASA's help, with the power to shape American perception of spaceflight. And they used that power to cling to the position, Hersch said, "recognizing that if anyone can be an astronaut, being an astronaut doesn't really mean anything anymore," and fearing that the public would realize the astronauts "had been lucky enough to be selected, but they weren't particularly special."

As part of the effort to retain their position, the early astronauts fought for NASA to give pilots more control of the spacecraft, rather than taking advantage of opportunities offered by automation. "Having average people flying into space was completely unthinkable, and astronauts were horrified by the thought that the future iterations of human space vehicles in the United States might be so completely automated that the pilot wouldn't really have anything to do at all," Hersch said.

Meanwhile, NASA and the rest of the government was also doing image work for the astronauts within the Cold War context of the space race, identifying them with "a particular kind of American masculinity that was to do with families, it was to do with patriotism, to do with belief in God," Dario Llinares, a cultural theorist at the University of Brighton in the U.K. who has analyzed the portrayal of early astronauts, told Space.com.

The stars-and-stripes, all-American vision was key, he added. "The kind of narrative that you see in the Western media is this antagonism between the way of life of Soviet communism and how that was portrayed negatively even in terms of being evil in comparison to Western freedom, and all of that kind of thing."

Related: From Yuri Gagarin's launch to today, human spaceflight has always been political

Take their military backgrounds, add the active spaceflight role they insisted upon, then consider NASA's careful media management strategy, and you get the astronaut recipe referred to as "the right stuff": a vision of a down-to-Earth yet swashbuckling, mythologized, middle-class American man triumphant in the face of possible death.

It's perhaps not a coincidence that the Cold War space race fostered such a powerful vision of the astronaut, since the entire endeavor was about perception, according to Teasel Muir-Harmony, a space historian and curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

"One of the very essential parts of the early space race was this idea that sending humans to the moon or setting that type of goal would win the hearts and minds of the world, and that this was essential for geopolitical power," she said. "The audience was such an essential piece of that puzzle."

But spaceflight today isn't quite trapped in the 1960s. By the end of the Apollo moon missions in 1972, the astronaut program was beginning to shift its focus to science, and NASA sent a geologist to the moon on the final flight.

As the agency prioritized long-duration spaceflight in low Earth orbit over exploration, NASA continued to broaden the role of an astronaut, recruiting a range of scientists to join the aviators. The space shuttle program that flew from 1981 to 2011 in particular allowed those with minimal flight training even a precious few non-agency personnel, such as Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who is now NASA administrator to fly and widened the perception of who could reach space, even as astronauts remained an elite corps.

"One thing that sustained the space shuttle program was, because it was a U.S. government-run space vehicle, it was plausible for people to believe that no matter who they are and how much money they had, they might themselves have an opportunity to fly in space in some kind of context," Hersch said.

It's into that landscape that business models of private spaceflight and the figure of the space tourist launched in the early 2000s. When those seven wealthy individuals made their way to the space station, their flights spurred additional controversy about what it meant to be an astronaut.

"There was a lot of debate about whether they should be called astronauts or space tourists and as a group, they all really rejected the term space tourist," Erika Nesvold, an astrophysicist and co-founder of the advocacy group the JustSpace Alliance, told Space.com.

"I think that's because the term astronaut has such an elite position, but in a really beloved sort of way, which is kind of unique in our society," she said. "There's a certain amount of anti-elitism such that people don't all uniformly love celebrities, or athletes, or whatnot, or politicians certainly but a lot of people just love astronauts."

The terminology of astronaut is still contentious, as is the difference that private companies will truly make when it comes to access to space. Tickets for Virgin Galactic flights have sold most recently for $250,000; Blue Origin has yet to announce a list price, but the one seat on the July 20 flight it sold went for $28 million at auction.

"While space billionaires often try to sell their efforts as 'making space more accessible' to people, they aren't really changing anything about accessibility," Lucianne Walkowicz, an astrophysicist at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and co-founder of the JustSpace Alliance, told Space.com in an email.

"For middle-to-upper-class white men, space has always been relatively accessible (after all, that's who the original astronaut selections were meant to target, to the exclusion of everyone else)," they wrote. "Wealthy people paying their way into exclusive, difficult-to-access spaces is as old as time. Tying spaceflight to wealth further emphasizes that space is yet another playground of the rich."

And while Bezos perhaps set out to right an old wrong by offering a seat to aviator Wally Funk, one of the so-called "Mercury 13" women who passed the same qualifying exams as the first American astronauts but were excluded from the corps, the JustSpace co-founders say gestures like this don't address the core issue.

"That just puts us in a world where we poor people, we non-billionaires, only get to go to space at the pleasure of the rich," Nesvold said. "That's not a solution, either."

Just as the perception of who can become an astronaut is perhaps expanding faster than spaceflight opportunities, grazing space will perhaps do more to society's view of Branson and Bezos than the flights will do to increase access to space.

"Space became a place where the astronauts were able to craft and hone their public image, and their celebrity was a chance to create a persona," Bimm said of the Mercury astronauts, and he suspects the same will be true for the space barons.

"I believe they are going to kind of bask in a bit of that aura that isn't really applicable to them," he said. "It's going to be a bit of a crucible moment where they can kind of burn away some stuff they don't want and sort of reinvent themselves. Will the Jeff Bezos that comes back from his six minutes in space be the same Jeff Bezos that went up? Of course, but he might be telling a different story, or he might be focusing on new things and claiming a transformation."

That said, the Mercury astronauts earned their celebrity through their spaceflight, whereas for Branson and Bezos one brief spaceflight can only go so far to change existing public images, Llinares said. "They already have a narrative that is non-astronaut-based; how we conceive of Branson and Bezos and [SpaceX founder Elon] Musk has to be seen through that first."

Bezos' announcement that he would fly was, notably, met with a host of quips about how perhaps he could simply stay in space if he wanted to go there so badly. Branson, meanwhile, has a long history of taking on adventurous attempts at firsts and records in his own activities, even as he has overseen the Virgin business empire.

And it's difficult to imagine seeing either man after spaceflight without considering how they built the commercial empires that have funded their paths to launch. Of course, that too has deep roots in the space race, itself a would-be allegory for political and economic systems.

"The space feats were supposed to symbolize not only the strength of a democratic society, but also the robustness of the American capitalist system in opposition to the Soviet communist system," Muir-Harmony said. "I think that today it's part of what these flights symbolize as well, and perhaps in a less shiny way."

And even as Branson and Bezos race each other to the edge of space, it's worth noting that neither man's company is quite doing something unprecedented, historians said. "Sixty years ago, without the benefit of tech entrepreneurs and without the benefit of computers, Americans organized to accomplish this feat and did so marvelously," Hersch said, referencing Alan Shepard's own suborbital flight in 1961, which occurred just weeks after the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin made the first-ever spaceflight and which is, of course, the namesake of the Blue Origin suborbital program.

"The United States has a tremendous tradition of people taking their money and doing really inventive, interesting things with it, and I really support that," Hersch said. "But as a historian, I always try to put these sorts of things into perspective, and I think, well, it's great that people are spending a ton of money to do something that NASA did in 1961."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Read the original:

As space billionaires take flight, 'the right stuff' for space travel enters a new era - Space.com

Wally Funk is one of the Mercury 13, a group of women who trained to be astronauts in the 1960s. Wally Funk hide caption

Wally Funk is one of the Mercury 13, a group of women who trained to be astronauts in the 1960s.

Wally Funk has been hoping for a long time to go to space. Later this month, the 82-year-old pilot and flight instructor will finally head there.

In 1961, Funk was among a group of female pilots testing whether women were fit for space travel. They became known as the Mercury 13, and they passed many of the same tests as the men. But the program was canceled, and Funk was never accepted by NASA.

On July 20, she'll join the crew on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. She's expected to break John Glenn's record as the oldest person to reach space.

In this 2019 NASA photo, Mercury 13 astronaut trainee Wally Funk visits the Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio. AP hide caption

In this 2019 NASA photo, Mercury 13 astronaut trainee Wally Funk visits the Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio.

Cheering Funk on at the West Texas launch is her friend and former flight student, Mary Holsenbeck. The two visited StoryCorps in Dallas in 2017, where Funk described the tests she took for the Mercury 13 program.

"I had needles stuck on every part of my body. Tubes running up my bottom. So I went along with it. It didn't bother me," Funk told Holsenbeck. "And then they said, 'We want you to come with a swimsuit; you're going to go into the isolation tank.' Well, I didn't know what that was. The lights come down, they said try not to move. Well, I didn't have a whole lot to think about. I'm 20, I had $10 in my pocket. And then finally they said: 'Wally, you were outstanding. You stayed in 10 hours and 35 minutes. You did the best of the guys that we've had and of the girls.' "

But then she was notified by telegram that the program had been shut down. She said she didn't pine. She applied to NASA four times, though she got turned down, she said, because she didn't have an engineering degree.

She made clear then that she had not given up on space.

I never let anything stop me. I know that my body and my mind can take anything that any space outfit wants to give me.

Wally Funk in 2017

"I never let anything stop me," she said. "I know that my body and my mind can take anything that any space outfit wants to give me high altitude chamber test, which is fine; centrifuge test, which I know I can do five and six G's. These things are easy for me."

Holsenbeck called Funk "the most fearless person" she's ever known and remembered how, when she was going through a divorce, her friend and mentor saved her life.

Wally Funk (left) and her friend and flight student, Mary Holsenbeck, circa 1993. Mary Holsenbeck hide caption

Wally Funk (left) and her friend and flight student, Mary Holsenbeck, circa 1993.

"You said, 'Mary, let's go flying' and I said, 'Wally, I can't afford to go flying.' And you said, 'I didn't ask you that meet me at the airport,' " Holsenbeck said. They went flying, and Funk told her to point the nose of the airplane toward a cloud and then fly to it.

"And it was the most freeing feeling," Holsenbeck says. "I felt like I was in charge of something when I was in that airplane, and that helped me to put myself back in charge of my own life. So yeah, you fixed the problem."

For years to this day the two women talk every evening at 10 p.m., telling one another about their days. They call it their 10 o'clock flight.

"So we go up into the clouds together because Wally, you've always told me, 'When you have problems? Go to the clouds.' "

Audio produced for Morning Edition by John White. NPR's Heidi Glenn adapted it for the web.

StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps.org.

See the rest here:

Wally Funk, A Lifelong Aspiring Astronaut, Will Finally Head To Space At 82 - NPR

Why billionaires going to space is a big deal, and not just costly joy rides.

A leading aerospace association has opted to register a lobbyist for the first time.

The last three Apollo missions to the moon were more revolutionary than you might think.

WELCOME BACK TO POLITICO SPACE, our must-read briefing on the policies and personalities shaping the new space age in Washington and beyond. Email us at [emailprotected] with tips, pitches and feedback, and find us on Twitter at @bryandbender. And dont forget to check out POLITICO's astropolitics page for articles, Q&As and more.

A NEW TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM: The long and at-times bumpy journey of the space tourism industry is poised to reach a major milestone beginning Sunday when the first of two space flights are set to carry Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos above the Earth.

Branson will be aboard VSS Unity when the crew takes off for the edge of space from New Mexico on Sunday. Bezos is set to be among the crew of the New Shepard on its maiden flight carrying humans into space from West Texas on July 20. They are the culmination of the 17-year odyssey of private space travel that began with the first flight of Virgins SpaceShipOne in 2004.

The flights will mark a major achievement for the expanding private space industry. But Karina Drees, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a leading industry association in Washington, maintains they are about far more than joy rides for the rich and famous.

The push to take private citizens to orbit is to really perfect the technology, perfect vehicles and then be able to manufacture those vehicles en masse as a new transportation system, which will be significant to people around the world, she told us Thursday. When we think about transporting not only people in an emergency situation, or organs, things that dont have the luxury of time when it comes to transporting around the world.

But is Washington ready to regulate this industry? As a comparison to commercial aviation, I think theres a pretty significant difference, Drees said, pointing out that fewer than 10 commercial space flights in the past 17 years have carried people. I feel like as a comparison we are at a faster pace than commercial aviation because it took decades to iron out a lot of those regulations back then.

The biggest concern: Yet one fear is that the government will adopt regulations based on old data on earlier spaceflight. The fear is if we are writing regulations based on old vehicles that werent very safe, then theres a potential implication here that these vehicles will also not be safe because the regulations are also not safe. We are still very much in data collection mode.

The industry is not concerned about regulation, she added. We want regulation. We just want safe regulation. The vehicles are just now coming online. How does anyone in government know how to regulate those vehicles when they are brand new?

Drees, the former CEO and general manager of Mojave Air & Space Port in California, believes better regulation also means enlisting more knowledgeable government personnel, particularly in the FAAs Office of Commercial Space Transportation, to design and execute those regulations.

Only 100 people: Theres so much talk about how we need more regulation, but our regulator is a team of 100 people, Drees said. They have not grown, they have not been able to keep up with industry, they do not have the expertise in-house to be able to regulate what the industry is doing, let alone keep up with the amount of launches they need to license.

Theyve got folks that are doing a lot of different things, she added. They are doing environmental reviews to process applications for spaceports and launch companies. Theyve got a pretty heavy workload in addition to being under pressure to write regulations.

I see that as by far the biggest concern we have and one of the key things we want from Congress, Drees said of the FAAs space work force.

Nevertheless, there is also a simmering backlash over what many see as not-so-simple publicity stunts, given the litany of Earth-bound problems to be tackled. Could there be a worse time for two ber-rich rocket owners to take a quick jaunt toward the dark? asked one commentator this week in The Atlantic.

We will be tuning in at 6 a.m. on Sunday when the Virgin Galactic launch window opens.

Related: The future of space exploration depends on the private sector, via National Review.

And: Mercury 13 legend Wally Funk will ride with Jeff Bezos to the edge of space, via The Verge

GETTING AROUND ON THE MOON: Apollo 11 gets most of the limelight when it comes to Americas Cold War race to the moon. But in his new book, Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, Earl Swift rediscovers the final three moon landings, focusing on the revolutionary vehicles used to roam around the lunar surface (once again relevant as NASA plans to return to the moon to maintain a long-term presence).

Some fun facts: The footprints left by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin after the Apollo 11 moon landing would fit inside the area of a football field. By contrast, the Apollo 15 astronauts, Dave Scott and Jim Irwin, covered 6.3 miles on just their first excursion in the lunar rover more than all the travel achieved by the first three Apollo landing crews combined. All told, astronauts on the last three lunar visits drove more than 56 miles.

Also: Examining the life of John Glenn, via The Space Review.

EXPANDING OUR EFFORTS: The Air Force Association, which describes itself as a nonprofit, independent, professional military and aerospace education association, is diving into the lobbying game.

William Castle, a former Pentagon and Senate Armed Services Committee lawyer who was named AFAs director of legislative affairs last month, officially registered as a lobbyist last week, according to a new disclosure.

The association, which is supported by leading defense and space contractors, has a broad lobbying agenda, in ensuring a dominant U.S. Air and Space Force, as the disclosure notes. Specific legislation includes the yearly National Defense Authorization Act and the Defense Appropriations Act.

Bridget Dongu, a spokesperson for AFA, said it marks the first time the organization has registered to lobby and comes as AFA seeks to raise its profile. We are expanding our efforts, not necessarily becoming a lobbying organization, she said. We want to invigorate our efforts on Capitol Hill.

Dongu also pointed out that AFA is just following the lead of similar organizations such the Association of the United States Army, which has been lobbying for years.

But it will have to tread carefully to keep its tax-exempt status as a 501 (c)(3). In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying), according to the IRS. A 501(c)(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status.

Congrats to David Kettelhut at the FAA for correctly answering that Jupiters moon Ganymede is named for the Trojan prince in Greek mythology regarded for his beauty and made immortal by Zeus and the cupbearer of the gods.

This weeks question: What space mission took humans the farthest distance from Earth?

The first person to email [emailprotected] with the correct answer gets bragging rights and a shoutout in the next newsletter!

NOAA to take first step toward a small satellite constellation: Space News

Satellite imagery provider Planet to go public: C4ISRNet

Radio telescope faces extremely concerning threat from satellite constellations: Space News

Huge leap for NASAs Mars helicopter ushers new mission support role: The Verge

China's Chang'e 6 mission will collect lunar samples from the far side of the moon by 2024: Space.com

Chinas moon samples could revise lunar chronology: Scientific American

MONDAY: The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies will mark up a bill to fund NASA and NOAA at 3 p.m.

MONDAY: A House Appropriations Subcommittee also marks up the transportation bill at 5 p.m.

TUESDAY: The Astronautical Society convenes its John Glenn Memorial Symposium.

THURSDAY: The Washington Space Business Roundtable holds a webinar with Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado at noon.

THURSDAY: The Aerospace Corp.s Space Policy Show podcast tackles norms of behavior in space at 1 p.m.

THURSDAY: The Space Force Association holds a discussion with Brian "Beam" Maue, a member of the Air Force chief of staffs Strategic Studies Group, at 2 p.m.

THURSDAY: Spacefest kicks off in Tucson, Ariz.

Read more from the original source:

Are we ready for space tourism? - POLITICO - Politico

ROCHESTER N.Y. (WROC) A local travel agent has a front row seat to Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic flight to space this weekend.

Chosen from a lottery, Craig Curran will fly to Spaceport America in New Mexico to see the launch.

Its history, and Im going to be there and Ive got my small contribution to it in terms of being a future astronaut, being part of the comradery, said Curran.

Curran has had a ticket to fly to space since 2011. Hes still waiting for space travel to open commercially, but the time is nearing.

But, tickets to space are not cheap. Right now, they cost upwards of $250,000. Curran said similar to commercial air travel, prices should reduce over time.

It will come down it will be democratized and available for a wide array of people. But initially yes, its going to be quite expensive to do this. This is rocket science after all, said Curran.

But you dont need spacecraft, to have a space experience. In September, Curran is chartering a Zero G flight from the Rochester airport.

This is the same aircraft thats used for NASA research [and] training for astronauts. People will have the chance to actually experience weightlessness, said Curran.

Curran said experiences like the Zero G flight will help him be as prepared as possible for his future trip.

I want to make the most of my flight to space with Virgin Galactic. So, the more acclimated I am to weightlessness, the more I can take advantage of the time that Im weightless 55 miles above the earth, said Curran.

While Curran doesnt know the exact date hell get to travel to space, he estimates 2023 or 2024.

See the original post here:

Local Travel Agent: Space Tourism is the Future - RochesterFirst

It takes energy to travel to, in, and around space. It also takes energy to act, live, and grow. Consequently, the establishment and sustaining of a permanent human presence in space will require a resilient, long-lasting, and secure source of energy.

Of the options we have, solar is a popular one given our familiarity with the technology here on Earth and its demonstrated in-space capabilities. It is relatively cheap, proven, and has seen deployment on the vast majority of missions into the solar system. However, the farther we journey from the sun and deeper we travel into space, the less sunlight we have to convert into energy. Unfortunately, even many of the places close to us that we are most interested in exploring (such as the permanently shadowed regions of the moon) have limited or no sunlight. To explore where sunlight is not always a constant, we need an alternative energy source.

Fission surface power (FSP) can reliably provide us with the energy needed in all of these different contexts. A fission-powered reactor can provide 150 kilowatts of electrical power and support a small lunar base for at least 10 years. This would allow NASA astronauts to create oxygen from regolith, provide electricity for other life-support systems, and enable any number of scientific missions. That same system could be scaled up to produce megawatts of electrical power for a large base capable of producing propellant, providing for increasingly larger crews, and enabling ambitious technology demonstrations and groundbreaking science missions.

Nuclear reactors designed for operation in space are well suited for these longer journeys as they are compact, energy dense, and scalable due to their modularity. However, what makes nuclear reactors an ideal power source for deep space exploration is their resilience. Space is the harshest environment known to humanity, but reactors designed for the lunar surface are capable of operating anywhere, at any time, for months and years on end.

The idea of sending a nuclear power system into space might sound fantastical, but its already more routine than many people realize. Nuclear power has been part of the United States space program since 1961, and since then, nuclear power systems have been incorporated into more than two dozen missions. The Voyager 2 probe launched by NASA in 1977 to study the outer planets and beyond famously carries a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that has allowed it to continue sending data back to Earth to this day. Most recently, NASAs Perseverance rover has been partly powered by a similar but more modern radioisotope power system as it explores the surface of Mars.

As these new space nuclear technologies are being developed by the government and companies like USNC-Tech, we have to rigorously adhere to regulations related to the use of nuclear material. Part of this is ensuring our systems are proliferation resistant and the use of high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) is the first step to doing so. HALEU is an internationally recognized, proliferation-resistant form of nuclear fuel, far less capable of being diverted to illicit nuclear weapons programs, but which can still provide plenty of power efficiently over a long period of time. This capability has been proven by private industry, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy in the context of feasibility work showing similar or equivalent performance with systems that use weapons-grade nuclear fuel.

All of this will culminate in an exciting moment when American astronauts will be able to spend weeks or even months at a time on the moon. It is vital that we do so, not just for science, but also to ensure our continued presence in the solar system follows the principles for a safe, peaceful, and prosperous future detailed in the Artemis Accords. A permanent presence on the moon will put the United States and its allies in a position of strength to set the terms and conditions for that future. The U.S. and its allies, signatories to the Artemis Accords, are committed to these values, and must create conditions where those values can thrive and prevent other nations with different priorities from doing so for their own.

As Congress prepares NASAs budget for fiscal year 2022, it has a valuable opportunity to ensure that America remains the worlds leader in sustainable space exploration by continuing to fund the development of advanced space nuclear technology. In recent years, Congress has supported and funded the development of nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP), a vital technology that would ferry astronauts to Mars in half the time of conventional propulsion systems, and I believe I speak for many in the space nuclear industry when I say that I am hopeful that this financial support for NTP development continues.

However, as nuclear propulsion systems become a reality, it is absolutely crucial that we also fund and develop the FSP systems that will enable humans to stay on the moon long-term once they arrive. With a relatively modest appropriation this year, NASA can seed the development of an FSP program that would result in a functional reactor demonstration on the moon within five or six years. When we combine this with the capabilities of the new launch vehicles and lunar landers being developed by companies in the United States and the prospect of delivering more than 5,000 kilograms to the lunar surface, we are looking at the ability to develop and deploy a game-changing capability, one that will enshrine the United States as the dominant spacefaring nation for decades to come.

This is an ambitious, but realistic timeline given the maturity of existing terrestrial reactor technology, and the meaningful progress already being made to adapt and advance that technology for use in space. Where previous lunar visits were measured in hours and days, investing in FSP now will give the next humans on the moon, including the first woman to walk on its surface, the energy required to survive, thrive, and build a permanent American presence on the moon.

Paolo Venneri is executive vice president of USNC-Tech, a technology development company established in 2019 as an independent subsidiary of Seattle-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp.

Read the original here:

Op-ed | America's permanent and resilient presence in space will be nuclear powered - SpaceNews