Category Archives: Space Travel

And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: August 20, 1960 -- 57 years ago today -- a date that gives new meaning to the expression "dog days of summer."

Soviet space dogs Strelka and Belka after a successful space flight in 1960.

ITAR-TASS Photo Agency/Alamy

For that was the day space dogs Belka and Strelka returned alive after orbiting the Earth for a day in a Soviet spacecraft.

Belka and Strelka were female strays recruited for space travel on the theory that street dogs were a tougher breed than those pampered house pets.

Belka and Strelka had the right stuff all right, becoming the first canine cosmonauts to survive an orbital space flight -- clearing the way for Yuri Gagarin to become the first human cosmonaut the following April.

Belka and Strelka never left Earth again. Strelka famously went on to give birth to a litter of puppies, one of whom was given to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as a goodwill gift.

Pushinka, offspring of Soviet space dog Stelka, sits outside her adopted home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

William J. Smith/AP

When THAT dog gave birth, President Kennedy playfully labeled her offspring "pupniks."

Russia honors the memory of Belka and Strelka to this day.

The animated movie feature "Space Dogs," released in 2010, tells their story.

And the REAL Belka and Strelka are still on view -- stuffed, alas -- beside their space capsule at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow.

The stuffed remains of Belka and Strekla, on display next to the capsule in which they flew into outer space, at the Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow.

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Almanac: Dogs in space - CBS News

Space suits are cool and complicated. Earlier this week, my colleague Loren Grush launched her new series Space Craft by seeing what wearing one is like. The answer? Exhausting. Unsurprisingly, science fiction writers, movie directors, and prop-makers also love space suits youll find them everywhere from Robert A. Heinleins novel Have Space Suit Will Travel, to the latest Alien movie. But not everybody does their homework: for every fictional space suit thats more than just a fancy costume, theres one thats impractical and nonsensical even in a fictional world.

Theres no such thing as an ideal space suit, because you need specific features for different environments. But we can answer a few basic questions. Is a fictional space suit safe and wearable for its characters? Does it perform its task well? And does it realistically look like it could perform that task? With that in mind, here are some of the greatest and most cringeworthy depictions, arranged from worst to best.

I love Titan A.E. to death, but even I have to admit that its space suit is a bit wonky. Years after the destruction of Earth, Cale ends up working salvage on a space station, which seems like a risky job we even see him get smacked with a huge section of a ship thats being dismantled.

But although the armored suit superficially looks designed for this work, this one seems pretty dangerous. That huge bubble helmet would provide amazing visibility, but it also looks like it could be easily broken. Those wires or tubes hanging off the back could snag on salvage. And as for the weird series of lights on the chest... what do those even do?

Where to start with Star Trek? The upcoming show Star Trek Discovery features a badass suit that looks like an entire miniature spaceship. But there are also some bizarre, cringeworthy depictions, like these from The Original Series. Theyre sparkly! They have weird, seemingly useless colored attachments, the wearer can really only see right in front of them, and the visor extends to the back of their head for some reason.

Fortunately, the show went with some marginally better (but still science fictional) versions for The Motion Picture, and some really plausible ones in Enterprise. But although the latest series suits look cool, they dont seem that realistic either, with an emphasis on armor and propulsion over anything else. Well have to wait until later this year to know just what theyre used for.

One of my absolute favorite space suits appeared long before real humans went into space: its in the 1950s Tintin comics (and later cartoons) Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon. These suits arent what we ended up using: theyre hard armor with a bubble helmet rather than lighter cloth, and seem cumbersome to wear and walk around in, not to mention specifically fitted to each person (and dog!)

But, theyre still a beautiful, iconic design that did draw on some real concepts. While they certainly predate the space age, and Herg does depict the suits in use on the Moon, as well as a couple of points where theyre being constructed and fixed, which means that he did put some thought into how these theoretical space suits might have functioned.

The 1950 film Destination Moon is another classic that predates the space age, like Explorers on the Moon. But its one of the first to deal with space travel in a somewhat realistic way, almost two decades before astronauts landed on the Moon, and even before the first rockets brought the first satellites into orbit.

The suits used in the film look pretty cool. Theyre not exactly what we ended up using for Lunar EVAs, but they get all the basics: flexible joints, detachable helmets, life support, and so forth. They even color-coded each astronaut so that the audience could tell each character apart. NASA only figured that out after Apollo 11, when people couldnt tell the astronauts apart on the television broadcasts, and slapped some stripes onto the mission commanders suit.

The Stargate franchise has used its share of space suits, ranging from plausibly realistic to downright strange. The last series, Stargate Universe, is definitely the latter. When an expedition is stranded on a distant starship, they discover several of these outfits and use them to explore a couple of hostile planets. But the suits look extremely cumbersome, with a lot of armor that will restrict ones movement, not to mention corners and edges that could snag on their surrounding. To be fair, they were designed by a long-lost, advanced human race, so maybe we just dont know what they were going for.

When I first watched Firefly, I was struck by an early scene where protagonist Captain Mal Reynolds is floating through space in a distinctly patched-together suit from repurposed parts, like his old combat helmet. Like lots of things in the series, these suits look like they could be used for any activity, whether thats stealing cargo, working on exterior repairs, or just moving around outside. But while it fits thematically, these activities are all pretty specific tasks, and I just cant quite buy that a suit made up of random parts is going to be safe or effective at any of them in the long run.

For a space show, we dont actually see many space suits in the SCIFI channels revival of Battlestar Galactica. On the rare occasions people head into space, its usually pilots flying combat or patrol missions, where they wear suits designed to keep a pilot alive after being ejected, which look closer to high-altitude fighter pilot uniforms than your traditional space suit. That said, these suits can keep someone alive on a planets surface, as we saw early in the show when Kara Starbuck Thrace is shot down on an uninhabitable moon.

These suits do have great helmets that afford quite a bit of visibility and can be pressurized, but theres still some sci-fi artistic license. They look improbably easy to move around in, and dont appear to have a whole lot of life-support options. If youre shot out, youve better hope for a quick rescue.

The 2000 film Mission to Mars is an exercise in exasperation, and the space suits that its characters use are no exception. These suits are used interchangeably between surface and space expeditions, and the helmets look as though they limit ones vision quite a bit.

But there are some good things here too: the suits piggyback off the design of real space suits, and include some realistic details like backpacks, chest controls, flexible joints, and color-coded suits.

Interstellar calls back to past cinematic space suits, which certainly look plausible and realistic, with details like color-coding for different characters. These appear mainly to be used for ground excursions, or for when theyre performing maneuvers in the Endurance. They do have some neat features, like thrusters mounted on the arms that dont seem all that practical for long-term use.

But ultimately, these suits just look ... kind of boring, which is a shame, given that most of the films design is really distinctive.

Weeks before Michael Bay started filming his 1998 blockbuster Armageddon, he apparently went to the props department and was dismayed at the space suits that he saw. It looked like an Adidas jogging suit on a rack, he complained. And if you dont have cool space suits, your entire movie is screwed.

The film actually does use some realistic suits. The characters train in a dive tank at NASA, and theyre later seen in the Advanced Crew Escape Suit that real shuttle crews wore during launches. But the suits they wear on the asteroid are fictional next-generation designs. They look a bit complicated, and are designed specifically for ground missions, carrying thrusters to keep someone on the ground in a low gravity environment. Props for specific purposes there.

Incidentally, the same years other blow-up-the-asteroid-before-it-strikes-the-Earth movie Deep Impact also featured astronauts at work in space. But that production used some suits that looked quite a bit more like the ones that are really used by astronauts.

An underrated sci-fi classic is the 1981 film Outland, which featured Sean Connery as a Federal Marshal working on a mining colony on Jupiters moon Io. The film features a fairly iconic suit, with a massive helmet with lights designed to show off the actors face.

The suits look pretty basic: theyre color coded, have a life support system and a couple of tubes that look as though theyll get caught on things, but they look fairly rugged and easy to use for their wearers. Those interior lights would probably get annoying though: I can imagine that theyd reflect off the helmets inner surface and be really distracting.

Sam Bell, the sole occupant of a mining facility in Duncan Jones debut film Moon, uses a really fantastic-looking space suit. Bells suit draws some inspiration from NASAs astronauts, as well as some classic science fiction films, like Alien.

This space suit is designed for excursions out onto the lunar surface or driving a rover, and its simple enough for one person to don. (Good when youre the only person there.) The helmet pops off easily enough, and there are plenty of lights for a worker to use while out and about, but the props department didnt add extras just for show. Another nice touch: Sams suit even appears visibly well-used when the film begins.

Its hard to find a space suit design thats more iconic than the one from Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey. These suits appear a couple of times in the film in a couple of different environments: first when the characters go into Tycho Crater to explore an anomaly, and later, on the ship Discovery One.

These suits are designed with a good dose of cool 1960s futurism, but they also get a lot of details right, thanks to designers who worked in the space and tech industry. They have control panels and life support, and seem to perform their jobs well, at least when you have your helmet on. Chris Hadfield later noted that the production even captured things like the sound of breathing while suited up. The production was even good enough to make people think Kubrick faked the Moon landings a year later.

The Alien franchise is loaded with cool space suits, some better than others. Alien leads the way with the suits the crew of the Nostromos uses for surface EVAs. These look appropriately designed for use in a harsh environment, while the space ship comes equipped with another space EVA suit stashed away in its shuttle. The suits in Alien: Covenant, which Adam Savage geeked out over at San Diego Comic-Con, are also dedicated-purpose designs, meant for light EVA and surface work. And then theres the hard suit thats used for more heavy lifting, and has a completely different design.

But there are also some misses, like the surface suit used in Prometheus. These suits are beautiful: skintight, lightly armored, with a fantastic bubble helmet. But as cool as they look, they dont seem very functional for serious or unexpected work and theyre not good at all at keeping alien acid vomit at bay.

The Expanse is set in a plausibly-realistic future in which much of humanity lives and works around the solar system, and a result, the shows characters use a variety space suits. In most cases, what we see are really utilitarian garments, used by blue collar workers on space ships or space stations.

These suits look as though they are designed with an eye towards practicality, and theyre not overly large or cumbersome. The helmets provide protection and some visibility, with lots of interchangeable parts or attachments for specific needs, such as working on depressurized parts of a spaceship, or out on an asteroid. Like Fireflys suits, they appear to be well-worn and patched, but these look like theyre quite a bit more durable than those ones.

There are high-tech suits in the show as well: the Martian military uses some heavily armored designs for their soldiers and Marines, who appear to be right at home in space, or on the surface of uninhabitable planets and moons. These suits are not only designed to protect a wearer from outer space, but also to wage war in a vacuum or on the ground.

Of all the films on this list, Gravity draws the most from the real world, so it naturally takes its cues from real equipment. The characters also use a couple of different suits, which is a nice touch: at one point, Dr. Ryan Stone dons a Russian space suit when she escapes into a Soyuz lander.

The film does take some liberties, though. Stone gets in and out of these suits really easily, and doesnt wear a cooling garment, whereas in real life, these are suits that are quite complicated to put on. But their appearance is as close as we can realistically expect in a big-budget Hollywood film.

In most cases, a film space suit is a film space suit. Sometimes, however, film designers recognize that they need something really specific. Case in point is the EVA suit used in Danny Boyles movie Sunshine. What really makes this suit really stand apart is its golden exterior, and the fact that it isnt designed for any sort of multi-purpose use. Its intended only for the Icarus and its mission to go close to the sun, and allow the astronauts onboard to go outside if needed in an environment of intense light.

This one is incredibly beautiful: its got a golden-reflective surface to protect its wearer from the intense rays from the sun, and was inspired by some unlikely sources, such as Samurai armor and deep-sea diving suits.

The Martian (both the book and the movie) is a story thats a realistic and plausible take on a future mission to Mars, and Mark Watneys space suit is probably one of the most important environments in the story. After being stranded on Mars, he spends a considerable amount of time in one.

The EVA suit used in The Martian certainly doesnt look anything like what the real Apollo astronauts used on the Moon. However, its designed with an eye towards of realism for what a Martian mission might require. The helmet is designed to impart as much visibility to the wearer as possible, and provides plenty of critical information. It also looks like parts can be worked on or switched out if needed, useful when youre far from home. Another bonus comes from the book: theyre each tailored for an individual astronaut, and they arent a one-size-fits-all garment.

The film also goes above and beyond by showing that space suits arent multi-purpose: theres one for the ground operations, but also an EVA suit for use in space, which looks really close to modern suits that NASA currently uses.

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18 space suits from science fiction, from worst to best - The Verge

Imagine a Star Wars movie in which there are no wars that take place in the stars. It sounds slightly insane, but if an Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone movie really happens, it could be the first film in the space-saga to not take place in outer space. And there are two good reasons.

First, if the film takes place between Episode III and Episode IV then Obi-Wan is supposed to be on Tatooine the entire time. Sure, its possible something else could be going on in the galaxy that audiences glimpse, but maybe not. If Kenobi was serious in his pledge to watch-over young Luke Skywalker, then leaving Tatooine would be a dereliction of that duty. In other words, if the movie stays with Old Bens point-of-view for the entire film, he probably wont get off the planet.

Second, Obi-Wan Kenobi for some reason really dislikes space travel. He mentions that he hates flying while battling Jango Fett in an asteroid field in Attack of the Clones. And at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, while piloting his Jedi Starfighter, he says dismissively, flying is for droids! Would Obi-Wan prefer self-driving spaceships?

If the Obi-Wan movie doesnt have any space travel in it, certain fans could possibly claim its not a real Star Wars movie. But, then again, the point of these standalone feels is in theory to do something different with the franchise. If Star Wars is to really take risks with its subject matter, then maybe the best thing an Obi-Wan movie could do is to ground its characters. Literally.

As of this writing, there is no release date or confirmation of the Obi-Wan movie.

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Why There Might Not Be Space Travel in the Obi-Wan Movie - Inverse

Thursday, August 17, 2017 at 10:54 a.m.

Illustration by Matt Griesmyer

An Oklahoma Congressman is President Donald Trumps choice to be the next NASA administrator, according to reports, but his plans for space may be pulled back to Earth by the man who hired him.

NASA Watch, a niche news organization that focuses on the space industry, reported Wednesday that Rep. Jim Bridenstine will be NASAs next leader. A Rice University graduate, Bridenstine is an aviator in the Navy Reserve and has served in Congress since 2012. He has not commented on speculation that hell soon join NASA.

In his five years in Congress, Bridenstine has shown an enthusiasm for space exploration, and said he wants the United States to reinvest in space and NASA, including more moon missions to explore the possibility of establishing a base there.

In 2016, the congressman sponsored the American Space Renaissance Act, which aims to project military strength through an American presence in space, spur commercial space innovation and provide clear goals and deadlines for NASA. In a website he created to promote the legislation, Bridenstine noted how often technology created for space travel has benefited the everyday lives of Americans and argued that the United States may cede influence over space by neglecting NASA.

Unfortunately, continued socioeconomic growth from space technology maturation and increased space access is no longer assured, Bridenstine wrote. Space is becoming more congested, contested, and competitive. We must establish responsible governance that will prevent mishaps, misperceptions, and mistrust, while assuring the use of space for all responsible parties. As a military pilot, I can attest that our national security and our very way of life require both military and commercial space capabilities.

The bill did not make it out of committee and received just a single co-sponsor, highlighting the struggle NASA has had finding the money it needs for its missions. Since the glory days of NASA, government investment in the space agency has dwindled. In 1966, in the middle of the Apollo Program, NASA spending accounted for 4.5 percent of the federal budget. Now, that figure is less than half a percent. Since the end of the shuttle program in 2011, American astronauts have had to hitch a ride with Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station.

Despite his ambitions for NASA and the American space industry, Bridenstine may be hamstrung by the administration that hired him. President Trumps FY 2018 budget includes $19.1 billion for NASA, a $561 million decrease from present levels that CBS News reported would eliminate some Earth science missions and put the kibosh on NASAs plan to retrieve a piece of an asteroid, an exercise that would prepare astronauts for the challenges of flying to Mars.

Where the president himself stands on NASA remains a mystery. In 2012, he criticized the Obama administration for cutting NASAs budget and forcing astronauts to hitchhike from Kazakhstan but he has yet to offer an alternative travel arrangement.

Trump did not articulate a clear vision for NASA during his presidential campaign. During a call with astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Trump asked astronauts to reach Mars "during my first term or, at worst, during my second term," after those same astronauts told him this would not be possible until the 2030s. Plus, they'd need more money.

So Bridenstine may soon inherit a problem shared by leaders across the government: a president with grand plans unwilling to invest the time, expertise or investment to reaching them.

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Likely NASA Administrator Has Big Space Ambitions But Trump May Hinder Them - Houston Press

On a Thursday afternoon in June, a 17-foot-tall rocket motorlooking like something a dedicated amateur might fire offstood fire-side-up on the salty desert of Promontory, Utah. Over the loudspeakers, an announcer counted down. And with the command to fire, quad cones of flame flew from the four inverted nozzles and grew toward the sky. As the smoke rose, it cast a four-leaf clover of shadow across the ground.

This was a test of the launch abort motor, a gadget built to carry NASA astronauts away from a rocket gone wrong. Made in Utah by a company called Orbital ATK, it's part of the Space Launch System : the agency's next generation space vehicle, meant to ferry humans and cargo into deep space . NASA has tasked Orbital ATK and other contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Aerojet Rocketdynewith building SLS and its crew capsule for the kinds of missions NASA hasnt undertaken since the Apollo days. But for much of the program's six years, NASA didn't know exactly where SLS would go. The agency spent billions of dollars on what critics called a rocket to nowhere.

In June, hundreds of spectatorsrocket scientists, astronauts, locals who line the highway for every scheduled testcame to watch the fireworks of the launch abort motor test. Charley Bown, a program manager, had warned it would be very short, very powerful, and very loud. Despite his prep talk, the crowd jumped at "fire." During tests like this one, Bown actually turns from the rocketry and watches the watchers, taking pictures of their faces. Some people just smile, he says. Some have a look of amazement.

Bown has been to a lot of these shows in his decades here. And Orbital ATK has done other test fires, lighting up the boosters that will launch the SLS. But this one was different. Because back in late March, Bill Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for NASAs Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate gave a flashy presentation detailing the agency's Deep Space Gateway and Transport Planwith proposed missions through the 2030s. Finally, the builders and testers could envision not just that their creations would go but that they would go to lunar orbit .

The tapestry of SLS's fate was always tangled. In 2010, before the shuttle was even in its grave , Congress told NASA to build the rocket using reappropriated shuttle parts. First, they thought the system might take astronauts to an asteroidyou know, practice for Mars. But maybe SLS could send a robot to tug an asteroid from its natural orbit and into the moon's orbit ? Also practice for Mars, of course.

With the 2016 transition of presidential power, NASA abandoned what little agenda it had. Which isn't unusual. The agencys mandates are always subject to the US's four-year flip-flop, despite the fact that decades-long mission plans require, believe it or not, decades. Since Trump took office, officials have debated whether to scrap missions to asteroids, whether to favor the moon over Mars, and whether to put humans aboard the very, very first mission, called EM-1 (it was a bad idea, and they won't).

Through all this, the contractors kept constructing and testing, keeping their focus simply on finishing . Until Gerstenmeier's March presentation. Finally, here was a roadmap. The first mission, according to this plan, will go to the moon's orbit in 2018.

Four years later, the rocket will launch a mission to Europa, that mystery moon on which moviemakers imagine oceanic aliens. Then, crews will shuttle to lunar orbit to build a deep-space habitat and staging area for longer-distance travel. Trips there will continue through 2029, building up the outer-space infrastructure. Four lucky people will spend a year hanging out in the ether around the moon, to see how they and the hab fare. And eventually, other astronauts will undock part of the space town and swivel it on a path toward Mars.

With those goalposts in place, NASA's contractors finally have somewhere to aim. Orbital ATK is currently proving that its hardware meets NASA's previously-established specs for safety and performance. And contractor Lockheed Martin continues to test the human capsule for NASA's deep-space forays: Orion.

As of late July, the Lockheed crew was in the throes of testing a full-size mockup of Orion . Off a road called Titan Loop in Colorado, Lockheed engineers test how the capsule fares in all kinds of weather, blasting it with sound waves to see how it handles vibration, shocking it to see if its components come out OK, putting pressure on it to see if its structure survives. It tests all the systems in various kinds of badness, says Christopher Aiken, an integration and test engineer.

The mockup isnt just a shell: Its electronics and controls are silicon copies of final product. When we fly this, it doesnt know its sitting on the ground, says Paul Sannes, manager of the test lab. The idea is that this model will feel and behave like the real thing under those same conditions, a voodoo doll of space travel. Last week, four Lockheed interns did an AMA on reddit. Getting to see a full mock-up of the capsule every day is pretty awesome, wrote Bailey Sikorski. Plus I get to touch it, which is even cooler.

Six hundred miles northwest, back at Orbital ATK, the biggest task is bureaucratic: a design certification review of the company's solid rocket boosters, which will power 80 percent of SLS's first few minutes of flight. Cast inside space-shuttle casings, the propellant's final form has the consistency of a pencil eraser. Technicians mix the solution in 600-gallon KitchenAids209 of them per boosterand pour that liquid into the five segments that make up each booster. Then they'll cure, trim, and X-ray them to make sure they're defect-free.

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The 12 Greatest Challenges for Space Exploration

When SLS goes up, it will eat through 1,385,000 pounds of that artisanal propellant in two minutes. And although the first flight wont happen till 2019, Orbital ATK has all the booster segments finished. The design certification will stretch through the end of this year. We provide to NASA all of the certification paperwork, all the drawings, all the test data, says Bown. And then? Assuming all's well? Ship, assemble, and fly, he says.

All that prep work means more now that SLS has real, concrete plans for launching astronauts to the moon's orbit. When the space shuttle Challenger broke apart in 1986, Bown worked at this Utah site. Engineers there, then as now, built NASAs rocket boosters. And it was a booster that failed, that cold Florida morning, 73 seconds after launch, when it was just higher than a commercial airliner. Seven astronauts died.

Bown kept working here, through decades and acquisitions and mergers and a whole lot of propellant work. I got to go from feeling horrible to feeling good about it again, he says.

Today, for major tests like that of the launch abort motor, NASA always sends at least one astronaut to observe. That presence means a lot: The astronauts get to meet the people theyve trusted to make the 177-foot-tall erasers that will fire them to space. And those engineers get to meet the people that propel their work.

The two types stand side by side at the testsboth jumping involuntarily, both perhaps in the frame of one of Bowns photos.

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NASA's Rocket to Nowhere Finally Has a Destination - WIRED

Erik Finman made headlines earlier this summer for becoming a bitcoin millionaire at the tender age of 18. He now tells TechCrunch hes working on a project with NASA to launch a mini satellite into space with the recordings of regular folks, tech leaders and top artists including pop idol Taylor Swift.

The launch is in celebration ofthe 40th anniversary of Carl Sagans Golden Recordsentonboard Voyager in 1977. Sagan is a personal hero of Finmans and he says he wanted to do something akin to the Golden Record to remind us about this time in world history.

Since almost everyone has a camera and an internet connection, we can now represent the world in a whole new way and showcase how the United States has changed since 40 years ago. Finman said.

Project DaVinci satellite

Finman wanted to get involved in space travel ever since he saw Elon Musk launch his reusable rockets. But his interest in the stars goes far back into his familys history. Finmans mother was involved in the NASA space program in the 80s and he says she was set to go as part of the crew on the fated spaceship Challenger. However, she ended up finding out she was pregnant with Finmans oldest brother and unable to go.

Though Challenger was a serious tragedy, his mother remained involved in the space program for many years. Her love for the stars instilled in him a desire to get involved himself. So, earlier this year, he submitted for and won a NASA grant enabling him to organize the endeavor, called Project DaVinci.

The government space program will handle the costs of the launch and provide materials for the satellite project. Meanwhile, Finman will gather the materials through a website,launching today, and has already employed a team of high school students from his hometown of Coeur dAlene, Idaho, and engineers in Los Angeles and Scotland to build the mini satellite.

Other artists and tech leaders already onboard include Vineographer Logan Paul, XPRIZEs Peter Diamandis, renowned aerospace engineer Burt Rutan and YouTube personality Casey Neistat.

Swifts album 1989 will head up into the stars, along with media from the previously listed participants and what he hopes will be something submitted from all 196 countries around the globe.

NASA has not yet set a date for the launch, but it should be sometime in Q1 of 2018, according to Finman.Those interested in submitting something in hopes it goes into space can do so by heading over to Finmans website and uploading a video, image or sound for free.

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Teen bitcoin millionaire Erik Finman is launching Taylor Swift's '1989' into space - TechCrunch

NASA's record-shattering astronaut Peggy Whitson will return to Earth next month after a momentous extended visit to the International Space Station (ISS). Whitson connected with Space.com from the orbiting laboratory on Aug. 9 to discuss the highlights of her mission including the solar eclipse of Aug. 21 and what her life will be like back on Earth.

Since Whitson launched to the ISS in November 2016, she has set a multitude of spaceflight records, including several for women in space. On day one, she became the oldest woman to go to space at the age of 56. During a spacewalk in March, she set a new record for the most spacewalking time accumulated by a female astronaut. One month later, she broke the record for cumulative time in space by a NASA astronaut, as well as the longest single spaceflight by a woman.

By the time Whitson heads home on Sept. 2, she'll have spent 289 consecutive days in space and a total of 665 days throughout the course of her 21-year career as an astronaut. She was originally supposed to spend just six months at the ISS, but NASA decided to keep her in space for an extra three months, which put her on track to continue her record-breaking streak. [In Photos: Record-Breaking NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson]

Before Whitson departs the space station, she and her crewmates will have the opportunity to watch a total solar eclipse sweep across North America on Aug. 21. "We have plans to take pictures and watch during the eclipse," Whitson told Space.com, adding that the space station crew will have three opportunities to view the eclipse. "Our orbits won't be terribly close I think they said around 1,700 miles but we're still hoping to be able to see it on three different orbits around the Earth, so it will be interesting [and] fun my first time to see an eclipse from up here."

Throughout her current mission to the ISS, Whitson has also helped to conduct several science investigations. As someone with a background in biochemistry, Whitson said that her favorite experiments involved looking at cell cultures of cancerous lung cells, testing new drug treatments and studying bone cells in microgravity.

Many of those experiments will continue both in space and on Earth after Whitson returns from the ISS. "We do a lot of the baseline data collections the final data collections for all the experiments that have been running since before we launched," Whitson explained. "There are many investigations on the human body that we've been doing up here in orbit, and we'll have to continue those studies as well."

While Whitson said she has no plans to return to space, her work with the International Space Station is far from over. She and her crewmates will spend the first 45 days after returning to Earth undergoing physical rehabilitation to get reacquainted with gravity. After that, Whitson said that she'll continue to work with the ISS program, "doing a lot of debriefs talking to the ground teams about procedures that worked really well, procedures that we need to try and improve on, tools or hardware, things that we had issues with just ideas of how to operationally improve the efficiencies up here so that we can get even more done."

Clearly, astronauts are superbusy people, even after their mission ends. But that doesn't mean they don't get to have a little vacation time, too. Whitson said she expects to take about four weeks off between now and Christmas (Dec. 25), followed by a boat trip with friends and family in February. After going almost 300 days without a single vacation, who can blame her?

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Record-Breaking Astronaut Peggy Whitson Talks About Space Travel & a Solar Eclipse - Space.com

August 15, 2017

Space travel can cause a lot of stress on the human body as the change in gravity, radiation and other factors creates a hostile environment. While much is known about how different parts of the body react in space, how lungs are affected by spaceflight has received little attention until now, say researchers at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Houston Methodist Research Institute.

That will change, though, once their research project, which aims to grow lungs in space, reaches the International Space Station. UTMB and HMRI researchers say what they learn from the study could have real implications for astronauts, as well as those still on Earth, and could lead to future therapeutics.

"We know a lot about what happens in space to bones, muscle, the heart and the immune system, but nobody knows much about what happens to the lungs," said Joan Nichols, a professor of Internal Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology, and associate director for research and operations for the Galveston National Laboratory at UTMB. "We know that there are some problems with lungs in space flight, but that hasn't been closely looked into. We hope to find out how lung cells react to the change in gravity and the extreme space environment, and then that can help us protect astronauts in space, as well as the lungs of regular people here on Earth."

This investigation represents the third of four collaborative projects currently active at the HMRI's Center for Space Nanomedicine. The center, directed by Alessandro Grattoni, chairman and associate professor of the Department of Nanomedicine at HMRI, focuses on the investigation of nanotechnology-based strategies for medicine on Earth and in space. The research is supported by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, NASA and HMRI.

Scientists from UTMB and HMRI prepared bioreactor pouches that include lung progenitor and stem cells and pieces of lung scaffolding. The scaffolding is the collagen and elastin frame on which lung cells grow. Space X successfully launched the payload containing these pouches Aug. 14 on its 12th Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-12) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is expected to arrive at the International Space Station Aug. 16. Once on the ISS, the cells are expected to grow on the scaffold in a retrofitted bioreactor.

Once the lung cells have returned to Earth, researchers will look for the development of fibrosis, the structure of the tissues and the response of immune cells, among other changes and damage that could occur to the lung cells. Lung injuries have been found to accelerate in space, and it is through close study of those cells that therapeutics hopefully could be developed.

Nichols and Dr. Joaquin Cortiella, a professor and director of the Lab of Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration at UTMB, have successfully grown lungs in their lab in Galveston, but now they will see if astronauts can do the same in zero gravity. Jason Sakamoto, affiliate professor and former co-chair of the Department of Nanomedicine at HMRI, has applied his novel organ decellularization process and nanotechnology-based delivery systems to support this overall lung regeneration effort.

"We have experience working with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space to study our nanotechnologies in action on the International Space Station," Grattoni said. "However, we are extremely excited to be a part of this clinical study, since it may play a pivotal role in how we approach future space travel in terms of preserving astronaut health. What we learn during this fundamental experiment could lead to science-fiction-like medical advancements, where organ regeneration becomes a reality in both deep space and here on Earth."

Researchers at HMRI will take the results from UTMB and work on developing therapeutics that could help astronauts, as well as people on Earth.

"This exploration will provide fundamental insight for the collaborative development of cell-based therapies for autoimmune diseases, hormone deficiencies and other issues," Grattoni said.

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Lungs in space: research project could lead to new lung therapeutics - Phys.Org

Andy Patrizio is a freelance technology writer based in Orange County, California. He's written for a variety of publications, ranging from Tom's Guide to Wired to Dr. Dobbs Journal.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise is preparing to send a supercomputer to where no supercomputer has gone before into orbit.

HPE and NASA have worked on what HPE calls the Spaceborne Computer for the better part of a year. It uses commercial off-the-shelf computer components, meaning its a fairly generic supercomputer. Its decent Ars Technica quotes HPE as stating its a 1 teraflop computer, but that wouldnt get it on the Top 500 list by a mile.

The Spaceborne Computer is built on HPE's Apollo 40 system, a high-density server racks that houses the compute, storage and networking in one case, much like a hyperconverged system. HPE Apollo is typically used for data analytics and high-performance computing (HPC).

It will be carried to the International Space Station aboard an August 14 flight by one of SpaceXs Dragon rockets, which is sending supplies to the space station. The main goal of the system is to test how well an HPC system will handle the rigors of space travel, as well as perform some research on the space station.

Apparently space is very tough on compute technology. Astronauts take ruggedized laptops with them, but they dont last very long due to abuse from radiation and solar flares because they dont have Earths atmosphere to shield them.

The Spaceborne Computer runs a specialized Linux operating system and uses a specially designed water-cooling system, but it has not been "ruggedized" to withstand solar radiation. Instead, it will be a sacrificial lamb to see how systems are impacted by the rigors of space, so engineers can address it in future systems.

Because of the toll taken on equipment, and due to the lack of space, most heavy computing work is done on Earth. Data is sent down from the International Space Station, crunched on Earth, and sent back. Given the distance to Earths orbit, thats not such a burden. But for a ship in orbit around Mars, that means a 20-minute transmission either way on top of the computing time.

So, by moving a supercomputer to the International Space Station, HPE and NASA hope to reduce some of the latency between the system and astronauts on missions to deeper space if and when that ever occurs.

Andy Patrizio is a freelance journalist based in southern California who has covered the computer industry for 20 years and has built every x86 PC hes ever owned, laptops not included.

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HPE looks to put a supercomputer in space - Network World

Sixteen-year-old Murad Rahimov peered down into a gigantic space he had only dreamed about before: the world's largest clean room, kept scrupulously free of any dust or contamination, where NASA assembles and tests spacecraft before launch.

Murad's eyes gleamed and a smile played on his face as he took it all in the scientists encased in sterile white suits; the replica of the massive new space telescope, the most powerful ever built, that will study the first galaxies born after the Big Bang.

Murad is obsessed with space. He has been ever since he was three, back in his home country Uzbekistan. His young imagination was sparked when his aunt gave him a picture book about space, and he couldn't stop looking at the images of the solar system. Soon after, he told his parents his dream: He wanted to become an astronaut and work for NASA.

On this recent day, he was getting a private tour of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., thanks to an NPR listener who heard about Murad's passion for space in a story that aired earlier this year. In January, NPR profiled the Rahimov family on the day they became naturalized as U.S. citizens. The Rahimovs immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in 2010, when Murad was nine. When they first landed in Kansas City, Murad spoke no English. Now, heading into his junior year of high school, he's on an accelerated track, taking extra classes in the summer and packing his schedule with AP courses.

Listener Aaron Schnittman heard that story on the radio, and his ears perked up when he heard that Murad's goal is to work for NASA. He emailed NPR that same day, that his brother is a research astronomer working for NASA at Goddard. "I think it would be a cool follow up to connect the son to my brother and help him make the connections needed to pursue studies in astronomy," he wrote.

Cool, indeed. The connection was made, emails were exchanged, and last week, at the invitation of Jeremy Schnittman, Murad and his mother, Limara Rahimova, made the trip to Goddard outside Washington, D.C. Schnittman, an astrophysicist who specializes in black holes, spent several hours showing the Rahimovs the inner workings of the space flight center and sharing his enthusiasm for space science.

Murad was clearly in his element, sporting a t-shirt with a picture of the Millennium Falcon spaceship from Star Wars, and a line from the movie: "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy."

He and his mother got to see the giant cryo-vac chamber where spacecraft are tested to find out if they'll withstand the extreme temperatures of space. They walked inside the acoustic chamber that blasts spacecraft with earsplitting sound to simulate the vibration of launch. They toured the laser lab where scientists are fine-tuning measurements to detect gravitational waves. "Amazing," Murad marveled.

Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist who specializes in black holes, spent several hours with Murad and his mother. Melissa Block/NPR hide caption

Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist who specializes in black holes, spent several hours with Murad and his mother.

Back in his office, ("black hole central," as he calls it) Schnittman talked with Murad about his research into how light gets bent around black holes. Naturally, they both share a hero in Albert Einstein, whose photo Schnittman keeps pinned above his desk. "It's remarkable," Schnittman said. "It's over 100 years since Einstein did all of this stuff, and still, everything is Einstein. Einstein, Einstein, Einstein."

When Murad mused about the possibilities of time travel, Schnittman sounded optimistic. "It's really not that much of a stretch to say that we're one step closer to time travel," he told Murad. "This is something that Einstein predicted 100 years ago. According to the theory, the equations, time travel should be possible. The trick is just building it and getting it to work, but as far as we can tell, there's no rule against it."

The astrophysicist and the would-be astronaut parted ways with the promise to stay in touch.

Murad touring NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman. Melissa Block/NPR hide caption

Murad touring NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman.

Later Murad said he loves science because it shows "the sheer awesomeness, the sheer scale of how insignificant and alone we are in the universe. All these petty fights that people have between themselves, they are just insignificant. When you start thinking about space, you get lost in the vastness of it. That's what captivates me the most."

Now that he's a U.S. citizen, he believes his dream of becoming an astronaut is more within reach. He and his brother automatically became citizens when their parents did. Murad was at school the day they took the oath: "I came home and looked at my parents, and felt all this pride," he said. "You could sense that something has changed. They were smiling from ear to ear."

For his mother, Limara, becoming a U.S. citizen has grounded her in a new way. "I felt before like I'm between countries," she said. "But now I feel like I'm staying ...both my feet here in this land."

Limara works at a school, and each morning they all stand for the pledge of allegiance. Before, she said, "it didn't touch me. But now, yes! And I know what each word in the pledge of allegiance means. And it means, for me, a lot."

As for Murad? The rising high school junior has his sights set on going to Cal Tech, and on the Mars mission he dreams of one day leading. "Some people, they tell me to try to get a real job," he said, "of maybe not shooting so high. But nah. I'm shooting for it. I'm gonna chase my dreams."

Meantime, there's a celestial show about to happen, one he's been excited about for years: the total solar eclipse.

Murad's hometown, Kansas City, is a perfect spot to see it: right in the path of totality.

Next Monday he will be outside, watching in awe as the moon slides over the sun, and dreaming big dreams of space.

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Young Astronaut Hopeful Gets NASA Tour Of His (Space) Dreams - NPR