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NASA commercial cargo provider SpaceX is targeting 11:39 a.m. EST Saturday, Dec. 5, for the launch of its 21st commercial resupply services (CRS-21) mission to the International Space Station from Launch Complex 39A at the agencys Kennedy Space Center in Florida. CRS-21 will deliver science investigations, supplies, and equipment for NASA and is the first mission under the companys second Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

Live coverage will air on NASA Television and the agencys website, with prelaunch events Friday, Dec. 4, and Saturday, Dec. 5.

The upgraded Dragon spacecraft will be filled with supplies and payloads, including critical materials to directly support dozens of the more than 250 science and research investigations that will occur during Expeditions 64 and 65. In addition to bringing research to the station, the Dragons unpressurized trunk will transport the Nanoracks Bishop Airlock.

The first commercially funded space station airlock, the Bishop Airlock is an airtight segment used for the transfer of payloads between the inside and outside of the station. It provides payload hosting, robotics testing, and satellite deployment while also serving as an outside toolbox for astronauts conducting spacewalks.

About 12 minutes after launch, Dragon will separate from the Falcon 9 rockets second stageand begin a carefully choreographed series of thruster firings to reach the space station. Arrival at the space station is planned for Sunday, Dec. 6. Dragon will autonomously dock to the stations Harmony module with Expedition 64 Flight Engineers Kate Rubins and Victor Glover of NASA monitoring operations.

The Dragon spacecraft will spend about one month attached to the space station before it returns to Earth with research and return cargo, with splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.

Saturday, Dec. 5

Sunday, Dec. 6

Members of the public can attend the launch virtually, receiving mission updates and opportunities normally reserved for on-site guests. NASAs virtual launch experience for CRS-21 includes curated launch resources, a behind-the-scenes look at the mission, notifications about NASA social interactions, and the opportunity for a virtual launch passport stamp following a successful launch.

To participate, members of the public can register for email updates or RSVP to the Facebook event for social media updatesto stay up-to-date on mission information, mission highlights, and interaction opportunities. To find out more, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/3kaJKJz

Engage kids and students in science, technology, engineering, and math aboard the space station through NASAs STEM on Station.

Members of the public also can share in the journey through a variety of activities, including:

Virtual Launch Passport

Print, fold, and get ready to fill yourvirtual launch passport. Stamps will be emailed following launches to all registrants (who are registered via email through Eventbrite). Passports available now:

https://go.nasa.gov/364lPIt

Watch and Engage on Social Media

Stay connected with the mission on social media, and let people know youre following it on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram using the hashtags #Dragon, #NASASocial, #BishopAirlock. Follow and tag these accounts:

Twitter: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @NASASocial, @Space_Station, @ISS_Research, ISS National Lab, @SpaceX

Facebook: NASA, NASAKennedy, ISS, ISS National Lab

Instagram: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @ISS, @ISSNationalLab, @SpaceX

Learn more about the SpaceX resupply mission at:

https://www.nasa.gov/spacex

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NASA TV Coverage Set for Next Space Station Resupply Mission with SpaceX - The Southern Maryland Chronicle

The idea of people going to live and work in space, outside of the extremely unique case of the International Space Station, has long been the strict domain of science fiction. Thats changing fast, however, with public space agencies, private companies and the scientific community all looking at ways of making it safe for people to live and work in space for longer periods and broadening accessibility of space to people who dont necessarily have the training and discipline of dedicated astronauts.

At TC Sessions: Space on December 16 & 17, well be talking to some of the people who want to make living and working in space a reality, and who are paving the way for the future of both commercial and scientific human space activity. Those efforts range from designing the systems people will need for staying safe and comfortable on long spaceflights, to ideating and developing the technologies needed for long-term stays on the surface of worlds that are far less hospitable to life than Earth, like the moon and Mars.

Were thrilled to have Janet Kavandi from Sierra Nevada Corporation, Melodie Yashar from SEArch+, Nujoud Mercy from NASA and Axioms Amir Blachman joining us at TC Sessions: Space on December 16 &17 to chat about the future of human space exploration and commercial activity.

Janet Kavandi is executive vice president of Space Systems at the Sierra Nevada Corporation. She was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1994 as a member of the fifteenth class of U.S. astronauts. She completed three space flights in which she supported space station payload integration, capsule communications and robotics. She went on to serve as director of flight crew operations at NASAs Johnson Space Center and then as director of NASAs Glenn Research Center, where she directed cutting-edge research on aerospace and aeronautical propulsion, power and communication technologies. She retired from NASA in 2019 after 25 years of service.

Melodie Yashar is a design architect, technologist and researcher. She is co-founder of Space Exploration Architecture (SEArch+), a group developing human-supporting concepts for space exploration. SEArch+ won top prize in both of NASAs design solicitations for a Mars habitat within the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. The success of the teams work in NASAs Centennial Challenge led to consultancy roles and collaborations with UTAS/Collins Aerospace, NASA Langley, ICON, NASA Marshall and others.

Nujoud Merancy is a systems engineer with extensive background in human spaceflight and spacecraft at NASA Johnson Space Center. She is currently the chief of the Exploration Mission Planning Office responsible for the team of engineers and analysts designing, developing and integrating NASAs human spaceflight portfolio beyond low earth orbit. These missions include planning for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, Space Launch System, Exploration Ground Systems, Gateway and Human Landing System.

Amir Blachman is chief business officer at Axiom, a pioneering company in the realm of commercializing space and building the first generation of private commercial space stations. He spent most of his career investing in and leading early-stage companies. Before joining Axiom as the companys first employee, he managed a syndicate of 120 space investors in 11 countries. Through this syndicate, he funded lunar landers, communication networks, Earth-imaging satellites, antennae and exploration technologies.

In order to hear from these experts, youll need to pick up your ticket to TC Sessions: Space, which will also include video on demand for all sessions, which means you wont have to miss a minute of expert insight, tips and trend spotting from the top founders, investors, technologists, government officials and military minds across public, private and defense sectors. There are even discounts for groups, students and military/government officials.

Youll find panel discussions, interviews, fireside chats and interactive Q&As on a range of topics: mineral exploration, global mapping of the Earth from space, deep tech software, defense capabilities, 3D-printed rockets and the future of agriculture and food technology. Dont miss the breakout sessions dedicated to accessing grant money. Explorethe event agendanow and get a jump on organizing your schedule.

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Find out how were working toward living and working in space at TC Sessions: Space 2020 - TechCrunch

A Chinese space probe has left the surface of the moon to return to Earth, bringing with it the first samples of lunar rock to be collected in four decades.

China has poured billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually sending humans to the moon.

The Change-5 spacecraft, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, left the surface at 11.10pm Beijing time (1510 GMT), said the state broadcaster CCTV, as mission engineers watching control screens applauded at length.

A module carrying lunar rocks and soil was in orbit after activating a powerful thrust engine, the China National Space Administration said of the mission, which was launched from Chinas southern Hainan province.

Scientists hope the samples will help them learn about the moons origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface.

If the return journey is successful, China will be only the third country to have retrieved samples from the moon, following the US and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 70s. This is the first such attempt since the Soviet Unions Luna 24 mission in 1976.

The spacecraft was due to collect 2kg (4.5lbs) of material in a previously unexplored area known as Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms), a vast lava plain, according to the science journal Nature.

The samples will be returned to Earth in a capsule programmed to land in northern Chinas Inner Mongolia region, according to Nasa.

Under President Xi Jinping, plans for Chinas space dream, as he calls it, have been put into overdrive. Beijing is looking to finally catch up with the US and Russia after years of belatedly matching their space milestones.

China launched its first satellite in 1970. Human spaceflight took decades longer, with Yang Liwei becoming the first taikonaut in 2003.

A Chinese lunar rover landed on the far side of the moon in January 2019 in a global first that boosted Beijings aspirations to become a space superpower.

The latest mission was among a slew of ambitious targets, which include creating a powerful rocket capable of delivering payloads heavier than those Nasa and the private firm SpaceX can handle, a lunar base, and a permanently crewed space station.

Chinas taikonauts and scientists have also talked up crewed missions to Mars.

Read the original here:
Chinese probe heads back to Earth after leaving moon's surface - The Guardian

This article was originally published atThe Conversation.The publication contributed the article to Space.com'sExpert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Amanda Jane Hughes, Lecturer, Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, University of Liverpool

Stefania Soldini, Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering, University of Liverpool

It sounds like science fiction: giant solar power stations floating in space that beam down enormous amounts of energy to Earth. And for a long time, the concept first developed by the Russian scientist,Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, in the 1920s was mainly an inspiration for writers.

A century later, however, scientists are making huge strides in turning the concept into reality. The European Space Agency has realised the potential of these efforts and is now looking tofund such projects, predicting that the first industrial resource we will get from space is beamed power.

Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, so theres a lot at stake. From rising global temperatures to shifting weather patterns, the impacts of climate change arealready being feltaround the globe. Overcoming this challenge will require radical changes to how we generate and consume energy.

Renewable energy technologies have developed drastically in recent years, withimproved efficiencyand lower cost. But one major barrier to their uptake is the fact that they dont provide a constant supply of energy. Wind and solar farms only produce energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining but we need electricity around the clock, every day. Ultimately, we need a way to store energy on a large scale before we can make the switch to renewable sources.

A possible way around this would be to generate solar energy in space. There are many advantages to this. A space-based solar power station could orbit to face the Sun 24 hours a day. The Earths atmosphere also absorbs and reflects some of the Suns light, so solar cells above the atmosphere will receive more sunlight and produce more energy.

But one of the key challenges to overcome is how to assemble, launch and deploy such large structures. A single solar power station may have to be as much as 10 kilometres squared in area equivalent to 1,400 football pitches. Using lightweight materials will also be critical, as the biggest expense will be the cost of launching the station into space on a rocket.

One proposed solution is to develop a swarm of thousands of smaller satellites that will come together and configure to form a single, large solar generator. In 2017, researchers at the California Institute of Technology outlined designs for amodular power station, consisting of thousands of ultralight solar cell tiles. They also demonstrated a prototype tile weighing just 280 grams per square metre, similar to the weight of card.

Recently, developments in manufacturing, such as 3D printing, are also being looked at for this application. At the University of Liverpool, we are exploring new manufacturing techniques forprinting ultralight solar cells on to solar sails. A solar sail is a foldable, lightweight and highly reflective membrane capable of harnessing the effect of the Suns radiation pressure topropel a spacecraft forward without fuel. We are exploring how to embed solar cells on solar sail structures to create large, fuel-free solar power stations.

These methods would enable us to construct the power stations in space. Indeed, it could one day be possible to manufacture and deploy units in space from the International Space Station or the futurelunar gateway stationthat will orbit the Moon. Such devices could in fact help provide power on the Moon.

The possibilities dont end there. While we are currently reliant on materials from Earth to build power stations, scientists are also considering using resources from space for manufacturing, such as materials found on the Moon.

Another major challenge will be getting the power transmitted back to Earth. The plan is to convert electricity from the solar cells into energy waves and use electromagnetic fields to transfer them down to an antenna on the Earths surface. The antenna would then convert the waves back into electricity. Researchers led by theJapan Aerospace Exploration Agencyhave already developed designs and demonstrated an orbiter system whichshould be able to do this.

There is still a lot of work to be done in this field, but the aim is that solar power stations in space will become a reality in the coming decades. Researchers in China havedesigned a system called Omega, which they aim to have operational by 2050. This system should be capable of supplying 2GW of power into Earths grid at peak performance, which is a huge amount. To produce that much power with solar panels on Earth, you would needmore than six million of them.

Smaller solar power satellites, like those designed to powerlunar rovers, could be operational even sooner.

Across the globe, the scientific community is committing time and effort to the development of solar power stations in space. Our hope is that they could one day be a vital tool in our fight against climate change.

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion onFacebook andTwitter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published onLive Science.

Originally posted here:
Solar power stations in space could be the answer to our energy needs - Space.com

SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience hurls sideways above the Earth as it approaches to the International Space Station earlier in 2020.

Space is closer than you might think -- about 62 miles up, only a little farther away from you than San Jose is from San Francisco. Heck, you can get halfway to space in a balloon.

The hardest part about space, it turns out, isn't so much getting there as staying there. That's where the idea of orbiting comes into play. Once you accomplish the hard work of getting a spacecraft into orbit, you can get years of use out of it as it loops more or less effortlessly around the planet on its own invisible track.

Orbits are "roadways in space," said Ajmal Yousuff, a Drexel University professor who studies aerospace vehicles. "You place a vehicle in space, and it stays there."

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

Scientists figured out how orbits work centuries before humans could launch spacecraft, but there's lots for the rest of us to learn about these looping tracks above the Earth -- and good reason to learn it. With new government and private sector projects, space stands to become even more important than it was during the 1960s at the start of the Space Age.

Among other efforts, several companies are filling the heavens with internet-beaming satellites, new SpaceX rockets have begun sending astronauts to the International Space Station, the US military has founded its new Space Force, and NASA is planning missions to the moon and Mars.

"It's the new Space Age -- and the new space race," said Ben Lamm, chief executive of software company Hypergiant. His company is working with the US Air Force on its Chameleon spacecraft, designed to be more adaptable, more independent and smarter than traditional spacecraft.

If you want to understand orbits, a great place to start is Isaac Newton, whose research paved the way to modern science with explanations of motion, light and gravity. Newton's Treatise of the System of the World from 1685 elegantly encapsulates how orbits work with a thought experiment that requires no calculus whatsoever.

The idea, sometimes called Newton's cannonball, goes like this. Imagine shooting a stone horizontally from a tall mountain, gradually increasing the speed at which it's shot.

"The greater the velocity is with which it is projected, the farther it goes before it falls to Earth," Newton said. With increasing horizontal velocity, "it would describe an arc of 1, 2, 5, 10, 100, 1,000 miles before it arrived at the Earth, till at last exceeding the limits of the Earth, it should pass quite by without touching it."

In other words, the stone would fall at exactly the same rate that the Earth's surface receded because of the Earth's curvature. In Newton's experiment, a stone shot with the right speed would circle the Earth and smack right back into the mountain.

In 1685, Isaac Newton published a thought experiment showing how a projectile, shot with gradually higher speed from atop a mountain, would eventually orbit the Earth. Atmospheric drag makes this impossible on the real Earth, a point Newton acknowledged.

In the real world, friction with the Earth's atmosphere would slow the projectile long before it could circle the Earth and return to the mountain. But a few miles up into space, where air is scarce, that projectile would keep on orbiting with almost nothing to stop it.

That brings us to the main difficulty of putting a satellite into orbit: getting enough horizontal velocity.

Whether you're watching enormous Saturn V rockets carrying humans to the moon or slender candlesticks launching smaller spacecraft, the rockets you see produce immense amounts of thrust. The vast majority of rocket fuel, though, propels the spacecraft laterally, not up. When you watch a rocket launch, the tilt toward the horizontal begins almost immediately after the craft leaves the launchpad.

How fast are those spacecraft going? The first artificial satellite, the Sputnik-1 that Russia launched in 1957, orbited at about 18,000 miles per hour over the surface of the Earth, or about 8 kilometers per second. The International Space Station whizzes by at a speed of 7.7 kmps, or about 17,000 mph.

In comparison, the supersonic Concorde passenger jet dawdled along only at about 1,500 mph.

It takes a lot more power for SpaceX to carry NASA astronauts to the ISS than it does for Blue Origin, the rocketry startup funded by Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, to pop its New Shepard rockets up and down without entering orbit.

The lower a spacecraft orbits, the faster it goes. That's why the Hubble Space Telescope, about 340 miles up (547km), circles the Earth every 95 minutes, but Global Positioning System satellites for navigation services, at 12,550 miles (20,200 km) up, take 12 hours for each orbit.

The Earth's rotation gives rockets a healthy eastward fling, and the closer to the equator a launch is, the bigger the fling.

That's in part why US launch sites are located toward the southern parts of the country and why European spacecraft sometimes are launched from the Guiana Space Center in South America, just 5 degrees of latitude away from the equator. NASA considered launching moon missions from an equatorial site -- though the fling factor was secondary to fuel considerations matching the moon's orbit.

When SpaceX launches a rocket, it reserves some fuel to return the first stage of the rocket to Earth after its job getting a spacecraft into orbit is done. For launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the rocket stage lands on a drone ship floating on the Atlantic hundreds of miles to the east.

Space starts about 62 miles (100km) above us, though the boundary is somewhat arbitrary. A bit higher than that, reaching up to about 1,243 miles (2,000 km) above the Earth's surface, is the most popular part of space, called low Earth orbit, or LEO.

This is where you'll find the International Space Station along with satellites for weather forecasting, spying, television, imaging and, increasingly, satellite-based broadband. Every human who's been in space, aside from a few who made it to the moon's vicinity during NASA's Apollo missions, have hugged the earth in LEO.

The SpaceX Starlink service, now in beta testing, is nearing 1,000 satellites in its constellation, on its way to more than 2,200. Amazon's Project Kuiper plans 3,200 satellites. OneWeb envisions a whopping 48,000 satellites, though its near-term plans ran into a bankruptcy problem this year. Companies based in Canada, Russia and China plan more.

It's easier than ever to get to LEO, and that's triggered "a golden age of LEO innovation," said HawkEye 360 Chief Executive John Serafini, whose company helps government and military customers track radio signals to spot subjects like smugglers or lost boats.

NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour orbits near the International Space Station in 2008. The ISS orbits somewhat higher than 200 miles above the Earth's surface, roughly the distance from New York to Boston.

"It would have been almost impossible for HawkEye 360 to build out a constellation of satellites 10 years ago," but SpaceX's reusable rockets and other improvements have lowered launch costs. "There are more opportunities to catch rides to orbit than ever before," he said.

Because LEO is relatively accessible, though, it's also where most of the Earth's space junk orbits. Friction with the upper fringes of the atmosphere drags a fraction of the detritus out of the way. Satellites must reckon with atmospheric friction, too, often nudging themselves to maintain proper orbit with gentle but conveniently solar-powered ion thrusters.

Medium Earth orbit, which reaches up to about 22,233 miles (35,780 km) above Earth, is a desert compared with LEO. But there are some notable denizens of this zone, in particular navigation satellite constellations.

The big sat-nav constellations, each with roughly 24 satellites, are the United States' GPS, Europe's Galileo, Russia's Glonass and China's BeiDou. GPS is handy for smartphone navigation, but military use is also a top justification for the expense of launching and maintaining these satellites.

Just above the upper boundary of MEO is geosynchronous orbit, a sweet spot where the orbital period matches the Earth's rotation. A satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the equator, called geostationary orbit, appears in the exact same spot in the sky as viewed from Earth.

That's particularly useful for communications because you can point a fixed ground station antenna directly at the satellite. However, radio transmission delays and signal strength are worse than with spacecraft in lower orbits.

Not all parking places in geosynchronous are created equal. Variations in the Earth's density nudge some satellites out of their spot, requiring occasional propulsion to keep them in line, Drexel's Yousuff said.

A2009 launch of NASA's Space Shuttle Discoveryshows the arcing path of a spacecraft headed to orbit. It's harder to get the lateral speed needed to stay in orbit than it is to get up to space, so rocket engines propel the spacecraft over the horizon.

Although many orbits are circular, some are elongated into more elliptical shapes that can slow a satellite's speed when it's farther away from the Earth.

Ellipses also are handy for changing orbits. NASA's Apollo missions began by launching the spacecraft into Earth's orbit, then a new rocket burn launched them into an elliptical orbit that stretched toward the moon, letting the astronauts coast most of the way. Another rocket burn inserted the spacecraft into lunar orbit.

One of Yousuff's favorite orbit types is elliptical. Most of Russia is well north of the equator, which limits geostationary satellites' usefulness. So the Russians came up with an alternative called the Molniya orbit.

With the Molniya orbit, a satellite whips over Australia at its closest point in orbit, called perigee, then naturally slows as it reaches its highest point above Moscow, called apogee. That way it spends much of its orbiting time usefully accessible.

The original Sirius satellite radio system used Molniya orbits, too, although after its acquisition of XM Satellite Radio to become Sirius XM Radio, it adopted XM's geostationary orbit approach.

There are plenty of other orbit types, too, like polar orbits that cross over both of the Earth's poles. And spacecraft that reach Earth's escape velocity can orbit the sun instead. The orbit of SpaceX's Starman just carried Elon Musk's publicity stunt close to Mars, for example. If today's commercial activity in low Earth orbit keeps lowering rocket launch costs, perhaps actual humans will follow him.

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Orbits explained: It's hard to get into space -- but great once you're there - CNET

More News04 Dec 2020 | 9:07 PM

Dhaka, Dec 4 (UNI) In the face of growing concern over the extreme congestion in the camps of Coxs Bazar and to avert any risk of death due to landslides and other unwarranted incidents, the Government of Bangladesh has decided to relocate, in phases, 1,00,000 Rohingyas to Bhashan Char.

Kuwait City, Dec 4 (UNI) Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Ahmed al-Sabah said on Friday that some progress has been made regarding reconciliation in the Gulf crisis involving the Saudi led boycott of Qatar.

Islamabad, Dec 4(UNI) A blast in a parked auto rickshaw at Pir Wadhai bus station of Pakistan's Rawalpindi city on Friday, left one dead and 7 injured, officials said.

Tehran, Dec 4 (UNI) Iran's Health Ministry on Friday reported 347 fresh nCoV death cases in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 49,695 since the outbreak of the disease in the country on Feb 19.

Dhaka, Dec 4(UNI) Bangladeshi authorities on Friday began the process of relocating thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote island despite concerns about their safety and against their consent, rights groups claimed.

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Russia to design space station section for 3D-printing - United News of India