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By: PTI | Washington | Published:February 19, 2017 1:44 pm In this frame from NASA TV, the SpaceX Dragon capsule arrives at the International Space Station bearing supplies on Wednesday, July 20, 2016. (NASA TV via AP)

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have harvested the first crop of Chinese cabbage after spending nearly a month tending to the leafy greens, according to NASA. While the space station crew will get to eat some of the Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage harvested by astronaut Peggy Whitson, the rest is being saved for scientific study back at NASAs Kennedy Space Centre.

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This is the fifth crop grown aboard the station, and the first Chinese cabbage. The crop was chosen after evaluating several leafy vegetables on a number of criteria, such as how well they grow and their nutritional value. The top four candidates were sent to NASAs Johnson Space Centers Space Food Systems team, where they brought in volunteer tasters to sample the choices.

The Tokyo Bekana turned out to be the most highly rated in all the taste categories, NASA said. Astronauts often report that their taste buds dull during spaceflight, and they frequently add hot sauce, honey or soy sauce to otherwise bland-tasting fare.

One explanation for this may be that, in a reduced gravity environment, the fluid in astronauts bodies shifts around equally, rather than being pulled down into their legs as were accustomed to on Earth. However, there is a backup plan to ensure the crews culinary delight.

If the fresh Chinese cabbage they grew does not awaken their taste buds on its own, packets of ranch dressing were also sent up to help them enjoy the fruits (or veggies) of their labour, NASA said.

This year, a second veggie system will be sent up to be seated next to the current one. It will provide side-by-side comparisons for future plant experiments and will hopefully make astronauts happy to have a bigger space garden. Aboard the next resupply mission to the space station will be an experiment involving Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant, and petri plates inside the veggie facility.

Arabidopsis is the genetic model of the plant world, making it a perfect sample organism for performing genetic studies. These experiments will provide a key piece of the puzzle of how plants adjust their physiology to meet the needs of growing in a place outside their evolutionary experience, said Dr Anna Lisa Paul, the principal Investigator, from University of Florida in the U.S. And the more complete our understanding, the more success we will have in future missions as we take plants with us off planet, Paul added.

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Cabbage harvested aboard space station: NASA - The Indian Express

New York Times

Elon Musk's SpaceX Launches Rocket Carrying Space Station Cargo New York Times A Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corporation SpaceX was launched, quickly disappearing into a low cloud deck, with 5,500 pounds of supplies, experiments and other cargo headed to the International Space Station. SpaceX rocket to roar into orbit to space stationABC Action News SpaceX launches supplies to space station Sunday morningLos Angeles Times Why NASA is sending a superbug to the space stationwtvr.com TIME -YouTube all 409 news articles »

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Elon Musk's SpaceX Launches Rocket Carrying Space Station Cargo - New York Times

The 31-second video appears to focus on the outside of the American station and within seconds, 'six large' glowing orbs crept past the camera.

According to the Daily Mail the sighting was originally spotted by Youtube user Streetcap1, who then shared the clip online.

The video was shared with alien conspiracy website SecureTeam and Tyler from group told the website that he believed the items would be "fairly large".

"Much larger than NASA's typical excuse of ice particles, we must be looking at icebergs."

Tyler explained that suspiciously NASA cut the live feed and replaced it with feed from camera showing the inside of a briefing room.

Last month John Craddick, from Wolverhampton in the UK, claimed he spotted another UFO on the ISS live feed.

He told the Mirror: "I've been watching it [the live feed] for years but never seen any UFOs on it before.

"I was showing a friend how it worked at around 11.30pm when the feed cut out, and 35 seconds after it came back on, this object appeared.

"At first it was really small and then it grew bigger, lasting for about 25 seconds," he said.

Mr Craddick claims that it must be alien because "nothing human can fly that high"

Below shows a similar occurrence that happened in 2015.

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Six UFOs 'creep past' International Space Station before NASA 'cuts live feed' - Irish Independent

SpaceX will have to wait at least another day to launch from NASA's historic moon pad.Last-minute rocket trouble forced SpaceX to halt Saturday's countdown at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

The unmanned Falcon rocket remains at Launch Complex 39A, waiting to soar on a space station delivery mission. It's the same pad where Americans flew to the moon almost a half-century ago, and where the shuttle program ended in 2011.

The problem concerned an issue with the steering system ofthe rocket's upper stage, SpaceX said.

This will be SpaceX's first Florida launch since a rocket explosion last summer.The next launch attempt could come as early as Sunday morning.

NASA leased the pad to Elon Musk's company in 2014.

"We are honoured to be allowed to use it," Musk said in a tweet noting its historic significance.

The nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station pad where SpaceX had been launching its Falcon 9 rockets was damaged during a fuelling accident in September. The company expects to return the pad to service later this year after repairs.

For its Kennedy Space Center debut, SpaceX will launch a Dragon cargo ship to the International Space Station for NASA, followed by several commercial satellite flights through the spring.

SpaceX has a backlog of more than 70 missions worth more than $10 billion.

Within about two years, the company expects to add human spaceflight to its launch services. The U.S. space agencyhas hired SpaceX and Boeing Co. to ferry astronauts to the space station, breaking a Russian monopoly in effect since the shuttles were retired.

For human spaceflight, SpaceX will need to build up 39A's launch tower and hang a new walkway so astronauts can access the Crew Dragon spaceship, said Stephen Payne, NASA's launch integration manager for the Commercial Crew program.

"It's kind of neat to go outside and look at the pad changing and see how what was once the future is becoming the present," Payne said in an interview.

The privately owned firm has not said how much it spent to refurbish the complex. Its transformation is the most visible of dozens of changes at Kennedy Space Center since the end of the shuttle program.

Boeing has taken over all three of the orbiter processing hangers, including one for its CST-100 Starliner commercial space taxi.

Just beyond the centre's gates, Jeff Bezo's space company Blue Origin is building a factory to manufacture its New Glenn rockets, which will fly satellites and eventually people from a new nearby launch pad.

NASA is keeping the second shuttle launch pad, 39B, and the massive Vehicle Assembly Building, for its own crewed Orion spaceships and heavy-lift Space Launch System rockets.

"In the entire history of human spaceflight, there have only been three countries that have ever flown in space, and here we're going to have four separate and distinct programs at the centre," said Kennedy Space Center planning director Tom Engler.

"It's just amazing when you think about it," he said.

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SpaceX delays rocket launch to International Space Station - CBC.ca

Caption + In an Air Force Academy classroom last week, junior cadet Jake Luts, right, and sophomore cadet Alex Danchi ponder their design for a fture space station. They're part of an 11-cadet team that's up for a NASA design award. (Air Force photo/ John Van Winkle)

The race to design the next generation of space stations is underway and a team of Air Force Academy cadets may have an early lead.

Cadets came up with Odyssey, a space station that has advantages the existing International Space Station does not possess - like gravity. But while building the hulking international station took years, the cadet proposal could be ready for orbital use in as little as two launches.

The key is a reliance on existing technology and a creative re-use of some used space hardware.

"It's built to be modular like the International Space Station using parts already on the ISS," explained junior cadet Jake Lutz, who is leading an 11-cadet team in a NASA competition for space station design.

The academy team made the semifinals, putting the cadets against peers from top engineering schools, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The cadet's secret weapon may be gravity. Getting gravity into outer space involves some basic physics, creative design and a lot of math.

The cadets hope to link station modules together in a circle that will spin, causing centrifugal force that would equate to the gravity on Mars - a third of that on Earth.

That would give astronauts the ability to fall down and a big leg-up in the health department, Lutz said.

Without gravity, novice astronauts often experience something like sea-sickness.

"It can take 24-72 hours for them to adjust," he said.

And life without gravity means astronauts need to spend hours exercising to keep their bodies from shutting down.

"Your heart is not doing any work," Lutz said.

Because it will have the same gravity as the Red Planet, the spinning station would also better prepare astronauts of the future headed for Mars and help space scientists ready gear for the trip.

Now, the team is working to design a bearing that would allow the gravity-giving spin. That's a tough problem, Lutz said, because the bearing must hold an airtight seal and withstand the rigors of spaceflight.

Keeping astronauts supplied with air and other life-support functions on the station is a worry for sophomore cadet Alex Danchi.

The cadet plan would tie the station's spinning habitat to the existing Tranquility module of the International Space Station, which now provides life support to astronauts in orbit.

It's envisioned that the station will be retired by then and could be parted out for other uses. Danchi is doing the math and studying specifications to determine if used space station parts will be good enough to keep astronauts alive a decade from now.

"I think it is just really cool," Danchi said, "One of my far-off dreams is to go to space."

For Danchi and Lutz, the station is more than classwork. They and their teammates have been finding precious minutes in their packed academy days to ponder their future in the stars.

"It mostly comes out of my sleep," Lutz said.

But the dreaming could pay off for Lutz. He wants to be an Air Force engineer and has higher goals, too.

"I'm gunning to be one of the first people on Mars," he said.

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Air Force Academy cadet team designing a next generation space station - Colorado Springs Gazette

A soccer ball originally packed onto space shuttle Challenger in 1986 is now orbiting the Earth on board the International Space Station, 31 years later. The soccer ball was signed and presented to NASA astronaut Ellison Onizuka by soccer players including his daughter from Clear Lake High School, near NASA's Johnson Space Center. It was recovered following the space shuttle's fatal explosion. (NASA / Courtesty photo)

Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka

More than 31 years after University of Colorado graduate Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka lost his life on the space shuttle Challenger, his spirit is being remembered aboard the International Space Station, by way of a soccer ball from his daughter's former school.

It's a ball that, like Onizuka himself, had once been destined for space, before fate intervened.

According to NASA, when Onizuka and six other astronauts launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 28, 1986, he carried several items with him. One item on board was a soccer ball, which had been signed and presented to him by soccer players including his own daughter from Clear Lake High School in Houston, which his daughter attended and is located near NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Following the catastrophic explosion of the Challenger 73 seconds after launch, killing everyone on board, that soccer ball was recovered and returned to the high school. It has been displayed there for the past 30 years.

However, Clear Lake Principal Karen Engle recently learned of the story behind the ball, and soon after, ISS Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough whose son attends the same school offered to take a school memento to the space station. Engle suggested that the memento should be the soccer ball.

It's there now, and Kimbrough sent out a picture of it with this tweet from his account on Feb. 3: "This ball was on Challenger that fateful day. Flown by Ellison Onizuka for his daughter, a soccer player. @Clear_LakeHS. #NASARemembers."

Word of the ball in space has reached Onizuka's sister, Shirley Matsuoka, at her home in Captain Cook, Hawaii.

"I think that's great something that was recovered and, you know, went up into space again," Matsuoka said.

She still has great pride in what her brother accomplished in his 39 years.

"I remember him as one that really tried be on top, and would do anything to get ahead," she said. "We think he did great."

One of those connected with CU who remembers Onizuka best is Robert Culp, professor emeritus and former chair of the Ann and H. J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department.

"I was his adviser for both his bachelor's and his master's degrees in that department and knew him very well at that time," Culp said. "He was one of those students who came in to see me several times a week. He liked to sit and talk about the aerospace industry. At that time, he was really more interested in airplanes than space."

Culp said Onizuka secured both degrees in the same year a rarity. A difficult feat.

"I can still remember when we got the phone call" about the loss of the Challenger, said Culp, who lives in Northglenn. "We were just trying to finish up something. I was going to run down to the television room where we had the launch on live, when I got a call from a colleague at the University of Texas and he told me what had happened. It was a shock, and it occupied us for quite some time. Lots of people liked to talk about Ellison."

Onizuka had some CU memorabilia with him on the Challenger such as a CU flag and football now on display in the CU Heritage Center as well as more important items with local connections. There were several CU payloads and experiments on the Challenger, including the Spartan Halley satellite, which was to be released from the shuttle to gather data on that comet, as well as a sophisticated camera system with which to capture images of the comet from inside the spacecraft.

Culp had not heard that the Clear Lake soccer ball had made it onto one NASA launch, much less a second, these many years later.

"He had never mentioned it when I was in touch with him," Culp said. "I guess he had a number of things he had taken up there, and that was just one that I had never heard about.

"I think it's very nice that they took it back up there. It helps to keep Ellison's name on people's minds. You don't want him to ever be forgotten. He was such a wonderful person."

Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan

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CU Boulder's Ellison Onizuka remembered aboard space station ... - Boulder Daily Camera