Category Archives: Transhuman News

NASA ISS footage: Mesmerising view of Northern Lights from space
Video taken from NASA #39;s International Space Station captures stunning Aurora Borealis light display over the North Pole and northern Russia. Wednesday 18 March. What are the...

By: euronews (in English)

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NASA ISS footage: Mesmerising view of Northern Lights from space - Video

Astronaut captures Aurora lights from International Space Station
Video taken from International Space Station captures stunning Aurora light display over the North Pole and northern Russia. Report by Claire Mewse.

By: ODN

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Astronaut captures Aurora lights from International Space Station - Video

Let #39;s Play: #39;Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel #39; l Part 7
Stop it, Belly! Here #39;s Part 7 of my playthrough of "Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel." "Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel" focuses on Jack, an employee of the Hyperion corporation. After the company #39;s...

By: Dominic Baez

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Let's Play: 'Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel' l Part 7 - Video

Kol attacking Tony in Space station

By: Cool Cool

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Kol attacking Tony in Space station - Video

Astronaut Andr Kuipers experimenting with a bubble of air inside a blob of water aboard the ISS. European Space Agency

Of all the issues with making space habitable for humans, the most important is something you can't even see -- something you rarely even think about: breathing. A constant supply of fresh, breathable air is absolutely vital. For the International Space Station, in orbit since 1998, this is especially important since shipping oxygen into space is an expensive and cumbersome option.

Here on Earth, the air we breathe contains a mixture of 78.09 percent nitrogen, 20.95 percent oxygen, 0.93 percent argon, 0.039 percent carbon dioxide, and traces of other gases. Each breath we take into our lungs takes the oxygen from the air, distributing it through the lungs' spongy material into capillaries, where it's diffused into the bloodstream.

Meanwhile, blood on its way back towards the lungs releases its waste carbon dioxide, which we exhale with each breath; and exhalation contains, on average, 16 percent oxygen and 5 percent carbon dioxide. On Earth, this works because plant life require carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, releasing oxygen as its own waste. It's a perfect symbiotic relationship.

Rice (left) and arabidopsis (right), grown in both gravity and microgravity conditions. Professor Takayuki Hoson/Osaka City University

There are plants on the International Space Station, but they're not for the production of oxygen and the eradication of carbon dioxide. There simply isn't enough room on the station for a viable floral air recycling plant, for one. The plants are on the space station so that researchers can figure out how well plants grow in zero-G. For example, lack of gravity means that water doesn't wick well into the soil -- meaning, in turn, that root systems can suffocate.

So relying on plants to produce air in space aboard the International Space Station is clearly not a viable solution.

Luckily, we have had a perfect technology for the development of air production and recycling. It's not always practical for submarines to surface in order to ventilate; which means that technologies for the generation of breathable air have been around for decades -- and in an airtight, sealed container to boot. The system used by the ISS is very similar to the system used aboard submarines.

European Space Agency

It consists of two components: the Water Reclamation System and the Oxygen Generation System; the latter can't operate without the former. The WRS reclaims water aboard the ISS -- the astronauts' urine, humidity condensation on the walls and windows, and Extra Vehicular Activity waste. All this fluid is then purified to very stringent standards so that it can be reused aboard the ISS. To be clear, this recycled water can't make up the entire amount of water the ISS requires, but it does reduce the amount of water that needs to be shipped from Earth.

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Breathe deep: How the ISS keeps astronauts alive

A new, inflatable addition to the International Space Station is ready for its close-up.

NASA officials viewed Bigelow Aerospace's Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) at the company's facility in Las Vegas on March 12. BEAM is scheduled to depart later this year for NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and then blast toward the station atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster.

BEAM's time attached to the orbiting lab should provide a key test for expandable space habitats, which represent a dramatic departure from traditional metallic designs. [Bigelow's Inflatable Space Station Idea in Photos]

"We're fortunate to have the space station to demonstrate potential habitation capabilities like BEAM," Jason Crusan, director of Advanced Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. "Station provides us with a long-duration microgravity platform with constant crew access to evaluate systems and technologies we are considering for future missions farther into deep space."

According to Bigelow Aerospace, the demonstration of expandable space habitat technology supports NASA's plans in the realm of human spaceflight, which ultimately lead to putting boots on Mars. Developing a deep-space habitat is an important step along the path to the Red Planet, agency officials say.

Founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, Bigelow Aerospace has as a goal the creation of a new paradigm in space commerce and exploration via the development and use of expandable habitat technology. Expandable habitats are viewed as offering dramatically larger volumes than rigid, metallic structures as well as enhanced protection against both radiation and physical debris.

Additionally, expandable habitats are lighter than traditional systems, take up less room in a rocket fairing for launch, and are seen by advocates as a less-costly alternative.

As an example, BEAM will measure just 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide in its packed configuration aboard SpaceX's robotic Dragon resupply spacecraft. Once is deployed and inflated, it will add an additional 565 cubic feet (16 cubic m) of volume about the size of a large family camping tent that is accessible to astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory.

NASA awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide BEAM, which will arrive at the space station in 2015 for a two-year technology demonstration.

After the module is berthed to the station's Tranquility node, astronauts will activate a pressurization system to expand the structure to its full size using air stored within the packed module.

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Bigelow Aerospace's Inflatable Habitat Ready for Space Station Trip