Category Archives: Space Station

A $2 million grant will fund new technology to evaluate the effects of space travel on human brain cells at the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory.

The grant, funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, a center of the National Institute of Health, will go to Emulate Inc., for the Boston-based companys Organs-on-Chips technology.

The company will use their Brain-Chip system and develop a fully automated research platform for experiments on ISS to be conducted under healthy and inflamed states to assess how space travel affects neuronal function, as well better understand how the human brain operates on Earth.

According to an Emulate press release, the ISS provides an environment where researchers can study human health in microgravity, allowing them to decouple the force of gravity from other effects that can impact brain cell function.

Different experiments will be conducted onboard to see how other space travel stressorshypergravity experienced during launch, reduced availability of oxygen known as hypoxia and increased levels of stress hormonesinfluence brain function.

As we make our Human Emulation System available to labs throughout the world, we continue to push new boundaries, Geraldine Hamilton, Ph.D., president and chief scientific officer of Emulate, said in a statement. Its an exciting opportunity for us to collaborate with experts working in the space program so that we can leverage research with Organ-Chips in space and apply the learnings to human health challenges that are experienced on Earth.

The Human Emulation System is an integrated system that provides a high-fidelity window into the inner-workings of the human body by integrating micro-engineering with living human cells to offer a new method to model human biology.

The researchers will also look at the relationship between inflammation and brain functiona very active area of investigation for furthering understanding of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimers and Parkinsons diseases.

The study was particularly focus on the blood-brain-barrier, which protects the brain by preventing unwanted substances from entering the brain and can be altered during inflammation.

The studies will use the Brain-Chip to evaluate the efficacy of anti-inflammatory therapeutic intervention on the blood-brain barrier in space.

Conducting research with Organs-on-Chips technology on the International Space Station is a remarkable opportunity to understand disease and improve human health, NCATS Director Dr. Christopher Austin said in a statement. Physiological functions in the microgravity of the International Space Station will provide insights that will increase translational effectiveness on Earth, including identifying novel targets for drug discovery and development.

Emulate is expected to adapt the instrumentation of their Human Emulation System to achieve the requirements for use of Organs-on-Chips technology on ISS.

They will also develop space-compatible hardware with their two partnersIRPI and SpaceTango.

The adaptation of our Organs-on-Chips technology for research in space advances new frontiers for designing the functionality of our system to be highly-automated, streamlined, and size-efficient, Chris Hinojosa, director of Discovery at Emulate, said in a statement. We are further optimizing our system to meet the requirements for use in space which, in turn, will enable us to improve our system for use by many researchers and companies on Earth.

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Organs-on-Chips Tech to be Tested at International Space Station - R & D Magazine

ANCHORAGE AK Alaskan Academy Award winner Ben Grossman, has created a virtual reality tour of the International Space Station.

Grossman, who grew up in Delta Junction and attended UAF before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film-making, created the virtual reality tour in partnership with NASA.

He explained that his company Magnopus went to the Johnson Space Center and proposed to NASA to put a 360 degree camera in the International Space Station.

The idea was to give people the feeling down on earth of floating around in space, said Grossman.

To prepare for the pitch, the team at Magnopus created a virtual reality tour of the ISS instead of making pictures, 3D models or artworks, said Grossman.

NASA approved the pitch and suggested that Magnopus should release the virtual reality tour as a stand-alone thing.

Grossman agreed and with the support of Occulus Rift his company started developing the experience.

Over 6 months, Grossman, his team of artists and a lot of astronauts developed the virtual reality tour that includes participation in tutorials, spacewalks and even docking a Space X ship.

Grossman explained that for many of the astronauts who had been to the ISS, there was an element of homesickness to not being able to return to space.

Grossman then went on to tell KTUU that he had to decide what image would be seen through the famed Cupola window of the ISS.

Being Alaskan, Grossman decided on Anchorage but he was careful to put elements of Denmark, Africa and Italy to hide his hand.

Grossman also confirmed that he is currently working on a major international film that is created in virtual reality and exported to be viewed in cinemas.

He said the production, slated for release in 2019, is the first of its type in the world and that he would be able to give more information later this year.

Grossman could not confirm a set timeline for when the 360 degree camera would be in place in the International Space Station

To view the project visit: Click here to go to the VR Tour

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Alaskan builds virtual reality tour of International Space Station - KTUU.com

Artists concept of a pulsar (blue-white disk in center) pulling in matter from a nearby star (red disk at upper right). The stellar material forms a disk around the pulsar (multicolored ring) before falling on to the surface at the magnetic poles. The pulsars intense magnetic field is represented by faint blue outlines surrounding the pulsar. Credit: NASA

A NASA instrument built to help astronomers learn about the structure and behaviour of neutron stars, super-dense stellar skeletons left behind by massive explosions, has been mounted to an observation post outside the International Space Station after delivery aboard a SpaceX supply ship earlier this month.

Since its arrival inside the trunk of SpaceXs Dragon cargo capsule, the X-ray astronomy experiment has been transferred from the spacecrafts unpressurized carrier to a platform on the space-facing side of the space stations starboard truss backbone, powered up and checked to ensure it can point at stellar targets as the research outpost orbits around Earth.

The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer, or NICER, is now going through alignment checks and test scans, allowing scientists to fine-tune the instrument. The calibrations should be complete next month, and NICERs ground team has penciled in July 13 as the first day of the instruments 18-month science mission.

NICERs developers at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center crammed 56 individual X-ray mirrors inside the instruments shell, with matching silicon detectors that will register individual photons of X-ray light, measuring their energies and times of arrival.

NASA says NICER is the first mission dedicated to neutron star research. Astronomers discovered neutron stars in 1967, decades after scientists first predicted their existence.

Neutron stars are left behind after lower-mass stars exploded in violent supernovas at the ends of their lives. The material from the star ends up crammed into an object the size of a city, and astronomers say one of the densest stable forms of matter in the universe resides in the deep interiors of neutron stars.

Scientists compare the density of a neutron star to packing the mass Mount Everest into a sugar cube. One teaspoon of neutron star matter would weight a billion tons on Earth, according to NASA.

NICER flew to the space station inside the rear trunk of a SpaceX Dragon supply ship, which launched June 3 from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida and berthed with the orbiting outpost June 5.

The stations Canadian-built robotic arm extracted the NICER experiment from the Dragon spacecraft June 11, and the instrument rode to its mounting location on an external platform EXPRESS Logistics Carrier-2 on a mobile rail car down the stations truss.

Mission controllers in Houston commanded and monitored the multi-day transfer from the ground, with the help of the stations two-armed Dextre robot.

The space stations robotic arm installed NICER on its mounting plate June 13, and controllers powered up the instruments electronics the next day, verifying all systems were OK. Range of motion tests were completed Friday after engineers needed extra time to release troublesome launch restraint bolts.

NICER rode to the space station with two other experiments in Dragons trunk.

One of the payloads, sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, will test a new solar array design could be used on future commercial satellites, making the power generators 20 percent lighter and able to fit into a launch package four times smaller than conventional fold-out solar panels.

A commercial Earth-imaging platform developed by Teledyne Brown was also stowed in Dragons trunk. TheMultiple User System for Earth Sensing, or MUSES, can host high-definition and hyperspectral cameras for Earth-viewing.

The MUSES payload was robotically moved to its new home on the space station before NICER, and the solar array testbed was unfurled for seven days of testing this week.

The installation of NICER clears the way for nearly a month of calibrations before it can start regular science observations.

Neutron stars are fantastical stars that are extraordinary in many ways, said Zaven Arzoumanian, NICERs deputy principal investigator and science lead at Goddard. They are the densest objects in the universe, they are the fastest-spinning objects known, they are the most strongly magnetic objects known.

The NICER science team wants to know the structure and composition of neutron stars, which are so extreme that normal atoms are pulverized, freeing subatomic particles like neutrons, protons and electrons.

As soon as you go below the surface of a neutron star, the pressures and densities rise extremely rapidly, and soon youre in an environment that you cant produce in any lab on Earth, said Slavko Bogdanov, a research scientist at Columbia University who leads the NICER light curve modeling group.

Unlike black holes, which develop from explosions of stars more than 20 times the mass of the sun, neutron stars can be directly observed.

A partnership between NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Naval Research Laboratory, NICER should give scientists their first measurements of the size of a neutron star.

They emit light all across the spectrum, from radio waves to visible light up to X-rays and gamma rays, primarily in narrow beams from their magnetic poles, Arzoumanian said. Just like the Earth, the magnetic poles on a neutron star are not necessarily aligned with the spin of the star, so you can get narrow beams that sweep as the star spins, just like a lighthouse.

And if we happen to be in the path of the sweep we see a flash everytime one of these beams go by and the stars from a distance appear to be pulsing, so theyre called pulsars, Arzoumanian said.

Scientists will also demonstrate the potential of using the timing of pulses from neutron stars for deep space navigation.

Were going to look at a subset of pulsars in the sky called millisecond pulsars, said Keith Gendreau, NICERs principal investigator at Goddard. In some of these millisecond pulsars, the pulses that we see are so regular that they remind us of atomic clocks.

Atomic clocks are the basis of the Global Positioning System satellites, according to Gendreau.

NASA calls the navigation demonstration the Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology, or SEXTANT.

Jason Mitchell, SEXTANTs project manager at Goddard, said his team aims to use predictable pulsar signals to locate the space station with a precision of 6 miles, or 10 kilometres, without the aid of GPS satellites or on-board navigation solutions.

Thats a small step compared to GPS, but its a giant step for using only pulsar measurements, and that will help us get into deep space, Mitchell said.

Our goal is to turn the G in GPS into galactic, and make it a Galactic Positioning System, he said.

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Experiment devoted to neutron star research installed on space ... - Astronomy Now Online

Zytronic has supplied an 84in diagonal touch sensor to the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution (NASM) for a recently unveiled exhibit. The museum, which displays the worlds largest collection of aircraft and spacecraft, welcomes 6.7 million visitors annually, making it the fifth most visited museum in the world.

New Mexico-based Ideum was tasked with updating one of the museums most heavily used exhibits a touch-interactive table that enables visitors to design, customise and launch space station modules of their own creation. The exhibits legacy iteration was projection based; and while it was very popular, the table was out-dated and was becoming harder to maintain.

The Smithsonian was looking for an update of this proven exhibit. We made some minor improvements to the interface and improved the software itself, but the biggest upgrade was to move the exhibit from a projection-based, optical touch table to a highly reliable, hardened and responsive touch table, said Ideums founder, Jim Spadaccini. We effectively rebuilt the entire exhibit from the ground-up to withstand the rigours of nearly constant use at what is one of the busiest museums in United States.

Ideum engineered an 84in touch table and chose to use Zytronics touch sensor because it could be built to Ideums specifications, and was able to deliver the multi-touch capabilities required to support simultaneous use by up to six visitors. Zytronic was heavily involved in the design process, and was able to produce the single, bespoke design 84in touch sensor without any of the upcharges that often accompany custom work from other touchscreen manufacturers. The ZyBrid touch sensor was designed using 6mm-thick thermally toughened Anti-Glare etched glass, providing a combination of smooth finger glide interactivity and impact resistance, and the Ideum table was manufactured in powder coated aluminium for additional durability.

To support the new hardware configuration, Ideum also redesigned the software to include key interactive elements. Specifically, once users complete their space station modules, they are able to virtually launch their module, displaying the final product at the centre of the table. Users can then email a rendering of the final product to friends or family.

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Zytronic sensor modifies new space station exhibit - Installation International

The International Space Station, as photographed by crewmembers aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 2010.

The International Space Station (ISS) is the most complex international scientific and engineering project in history and the largest structure humans have ever put into space. This high-flying satellite is a laboratory for new technologies and an observation platform for astronomical, environmental and geological research. As a permanently occupied outpost in outer space, it serves as a stepping-stone for further space exploration. This includes Mars, which NASA is now stating is its goal for human space exploration.

The space station flies at an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. It circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of about 17,500 mph (28,000 kph). In one day, the station travels about the distance it would take to go from Earth to the moon and back. The space station can rival the brilliant planet Venus in brightness and appears as a bright moving light across the night sky. It can be seen from Earth without the use of a telescope by night sky observers who know when and where to look. You canuse our Satellite Tracker pagepowered byN2YO.comto find out when to see the space station.

Five different space agencies representing 15 countries built the $100-billion International Space Station and continue to operate it today.NASA, Russia's Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos), theEuropean Space Agency, theCanadian Space Agencyand theJapan Aerospace Exploration Agencyare the primary space agency partners on the project.

The International Space Station was taken into space piece-by-piece and graduallybuilt in orbit. It consists of modules and connecting nodes that contain living quarters andlaboratories, as well as exterior trusses that provide structural support, and solar panels that provide power. The first module, Russia's Zarya module, launched in 1998.The station has been continuously occupied since Nov. 2, 2000.

[Infographic: The International Space Station: Inside and Out]

Starting in 2015, changes to the ISS were performed to prepare the complex for crewed commercial spacecraft, which will begin arriving as early as 2017.Two international docking adapterswill be added to the station. Additionally, an inflatable module from Bigelow Aerospace isscheduled to arrive in 2016.

Current plans call for the space station to be operated through at least 2020. NASA has requested an extension until 2024. Discussions to extend the space station's lifetime are ongoing among all international partners; several countries, such as Canada, Russia and Japan, have expressed their support for extending the station's operations.

During the space station's major construction phase, some Russian modules and docking ports were launched directly to the orbiting lab, while other NASA and international components (including Russian hardware) were delivered on U.S. space shuttles. [Rare Photos: Space Shuttle at Space Station]

The space station, including its large solar arrays, spans the area of a U.S. football field, including the end zones, and weighs 861,804 lbs. (391,000 kilograms), not including visiting vehicles. The complex now has more livable room than a conventional five-bedroom house, and has two bathrooms, gym facilities and a 360-degree bay window. Astronauts have also compared the space station's living space to the cabin of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

A six-person expedition crew typically stays four to six months aboard the ISS. The first space station crews were three-person teams, though after the tragicColumbia shuttle disasterthe crew size temporarily dropped to two-person teams. The space station reached its full six-person crew size in 2009 as new modules, laboratories and facilities were brought online.

Also in 2009, the record for the largest gathering in space was set during NASA's STS-127 shuttle mission aboard Endeavour. When Endeavour docked with the International Space Station, the shuttle's seven-person crew went aboard the orbiting lab, joining the six spaceflyers already there. The 13-person party was the largest-ever gathering of people in space at the same time. While subsequent NASA shuttle and station crews matched the 13-person record, it has never been topped. [Related: The Most Extreme Human Spaceflight Records]

With a full complement of six crewmembers, the station operates as a full research facility. In recent years, technology such as 3-D printing, autonomous Earth imaging, laser communications and mini-satellite launchers have been added to the station; some are controlled by crewmembers, and some controlled by the ground. Additionally, there are dozens of ongoing investigations looking at the health of astronauts staying on the station for several months. [Related: Weightlessness and Its Effect on Astronauts]

Crews are not only responsible for science, but also for maintaining the station. Sometimes, this requires that they venture on spacewalks to perform repairs. From time to time, these repairs can be urgent such as when a part of the ammonia system fails, which has happened a couple of times.

Spacewalk safety procedures were changed after apotentially deadly 2013 incidentwhen astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet filled with water while he was working outside the station. NASA now responds quickly to water incursion incidents. It also has added pads to the spacesuits to soak up the liquid, and a tube to provide an alternate breathing location should the helmet fill with water. NASA is also testing technology that could supplement or replace astronaut spacewalks. One example is Robonaut. A prototype currently on board the station is able to flip switches and do other routine tasks under supervision, and may be modified at some point to work outside as well. [Infographic: Meet Robonaut 2, NASA's Space Droid]

If the crew needs to evacuate the station, they can return to Earth aboard two Russian Soyuz vehicles docked to the ISS. Additional crewmembers are transported to the ISS by Soyuz. Prior to the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, new space station crewmembers were also ferried to and from the station during shuttle missions. In 2017 or so, NASA expects to replace most Soyuz flights with SpaceX's crewedDragon spacecraftandBoeing's CST-100.

Crews aboard the ISS are assisted by mission control centers in Houston and Moscow and a payload control center in Huntsville, Ala. Other international mission control centers support the space station from Japan, Canada and Europe. The ISS can also be controlled from mission control centers in Houston or Moscow. [Photos:Space Station's Expedition 32 Mission]

The ISS hosted its first one-year crew in 2015-16, with NASA's Scott Kelly and Roscosmos' Mikhail Kornienko, which drew international attention and acclaim. The agencies have expressed interest in running more one-year missions in the future, but have not made a commitment to date.

The International Space Station is the largest structure in space ever built by humans. Let's see how much you know about the basics of this science laboratory in the sky.

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Cosmic Quiz: Do You Know the International Space St...

The International Space Station is the largest structure in space ever built by humans. Let's see how much you know about the basics of this science laboratory in the sky.

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor.

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International Space Station: Facts, History & Tracking

ALTA LOMA >> Forget putting a class project on the refrigerator: A group of Alta Loma Christian middle school students have their work orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station.

Aboard the ISS is a cube designed and programmed by the Alta Loma SpaceEagles space science and engineering team. The cube has a light that turns on and off based on input from a pair of heat sensors. Alta Loma Christian was one of 11 middle schools nationwide taking part in the Quest for Space Beta ISS Project, organized by the San Jose-based Quest Institute for Quality Education.

It was a bag of parts, made for prototyping, said Boeing engineer Jim DellaNeve, who was an adviser for the students.

Students used software from Lego Mindstorms and Microsoft to develop their project, which was then copied onto hardware that was launched into space June 3 aboard SpaceX mission CRS-11 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I knew going into it, that if it was going to be a stretch, we had the perfect kids coming to handle it, said science teacher and STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) coordinator Michelle Martinez. And they did amazing.

The SpaceEagles got a more authentic engineering experience than the project developers envisioned.

It also didnt help that Quest didnt have the right diagrams at first, said Jeffrey Kotz, 14, who served as project manager and head electrical engineer as a then-eighth grader. I tried to build my own, but it didnt work any better.

Things going wrong, of course, was an education all its own.

More of my role than anything was peacemaker when things got stressful, said math teacher Jasmine Royse. There was absolutely just as much learning in the teamwork process and in the team building process as in the engineering process.

And those skills were needed:

I can be challenging working with a team, laughed Samuel Bement, 14, who was an eighth grader during the projects construction and who served as one of two coders on the project. But it was a great experience, learning how to work with people.

And ultimately, thats the most valuable skill learned on an ambitious project like the Quest for Space.

When the pressures on, do you behave yourself, do you finger point? Those are real-world things that are invaluable, DellaNeve said.

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This likely wont be the last time Alta Lomas SpaceEagles fly:

When its time to re-up, we wont wait, said Vance Nichols, Alta Loma Christians Head of School, whose father was an aerospace design engineer. Were in as soon as its available.

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International Space Station hosts Alta Loma middle school students ... - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Jun.19.2017 / 10:35 AM ET

While it plans to someday host a moon colony and space station, the proposed space-based nation Asgardia is starting small: The project will launch its first satellite this fall to store data for the nation's newly selected citizens. Some 200,000 were chosen from the more than 500,000 applicants.

During a press conference in Hong Kong on June 13, Asgardia's founder, Igor Ashurbeyli, revealed concrete details about the satellite: Asgardia-1 will be deployed from Orbital ATK's Cygnus OA-8 resupply spacecraft launching in September.

Related: Private Space Stations of the Future Imagined

The satellite is 10 x 20 x 20 centimeters (3.9 x 7.9 x 7.9 inches) and has eight batteries and four deployable solar arrays. It will orbit at up to 500 kilometers (310 miles) above Earth. Texas-based space-services firm NanoRacks acts as the satellite's prime contractor and operator.

Someday, Ashurbeyli said, he hopes to create a planetary-defense constellation that will help protect against asteroids, solar flares and human-made space debris; this satellite is just the first step.

During the conference, Ashurbeyli also described plans for a space station and moon colony. "We plan to have this station in space and on the moon," he said. "It will be a four-level orbital station. I think the technical details will be defined by the Ministry of Science, which I hope we will have in the autumn of this year."

Ashurbeyli didn't provide additional details, but Asgardia has released imagery of the potential off-Earth locations. One image shows a rotating-wheel space station alongside an interplanetary rocket, and another shows, presumably, the interior of that space station with a wall of windows, a canal and greenery. The rocket has a habitation module and a lunar lander that looks like a cross between the NASA Orion spacecraft and the 1960s Apollo program lunar lander.

The approved applicants for Asgardian citizenship will be invited to vote on a constitution for the space-based nation on June 18. At that time, Ashurbeyli said, the organs of the proposed state the ministries, parliament and executive branch should be created. Ashurbeyli is calling June 18 Asgardian National Unity Day, and the date will be a public holiday if the state is realized.

Related: Incredible Technology: How to Build a Space Station Colony

More than 500,000 people applied for Asgardian citizenship online within 20 days when the project was announced in October last year. The organizers removed ineligible people, such as children, and were left with almost 200,000 people from about 200 countries. (Now, the website lists more than 210,000.) The approved applicants have each received personal certificates of Asgardia and can vote to approve the lawyer-designed constitution on June 18. The constitution was published on June 13.

Of the citizenship applicants, 80 percent are men, and the largest demographic comprises 18- to 35-year-olds. While there are applicants from almost every country on Earth, China has the most applicants, followed by Turkey, then the United States and then Italy. People can register as prospective Asgardians on the website.

Asgardia is being funded by Ashurbeyli's nonprofit Aerospace International Research Center (AIRC), based in Vienna. He said he expects that once Asgardia's constitution is approved, the state will be built by its citizen volunteers and Asgardia will become self-funding. Ashurbeyli said he expects to file for United Nations recognition by April 2018, if Asgardia's parliament and government have been set up and the satellite launched before then, he said during the conference.

In the meantime, AIRC owns Asgardian intellectual property. The company will collect, analyze and fund ideas and startups in space technology for the benefit of Asgardia. Ashurbeyli is also offering 300KB of free data storage on board Asgardia-1 for Asgardian citizens. Family members, up to a maximum of 400,000 people, will get 200KB. Another 1 million people will get 100KB.

"Sixty years after the launch of the first-ever artificial satellite, Sputnik, our own space satellite, Asgardia-1, will mark the beginning of a new space era, taking our citizens into space in virtual form, at first," Ashurbeyli said.

Ram Jakhu, the director of McGill University's Institute of Air and Space Law in Montreal, is the Asgardia project team legal expert. During the conference, he told the press that the Asgardian data stored on Asgardia-1 would be subject to U.S. privacy laws. The Asgardians' data will also be stored on future Asgardian satellites.

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Aspiring Space-Based Nation to Start with Baby Steps - NBCNews.com

A future experiment on the International Space Station is taking the recipe instruction allow the dough to rise to all new heights. Scheduled to launch in 2018 during Horizons, Alexander Gersts second science mission as a European Space Agency astronaut, Bake in Space will experiment with a specialty bread dough in a microgravity oven to bake in orbit for the first time ever.

Baking where nobody baked before, said the team behind Bake In Space. Bake In Space seeks to address the scientific and technical challenges relating to the production of fresh bread in space. The Bake in Space team behind the experiment is compromised of former shuttle astronaut Gerhard Thiele, German scientists, and engineers but its not about augmenting the current station crews diet. Instead, researchers are exploring options for future space travel, when spaceflight is available for private tours.

As space tourism takes off and people spend more time in space, we need to allow bread to be made from scratch, said Sebastian Marcu, CEO, and founder of Bake In Space, based in Bremen Germany. The main difficulty with bread in space and the driving force behind the experiment is the tiny, innocuous breadcrumb. While perfectly innocent on Earth, in the microgravity of space, they can cause a laundry list of issues including complications with ventilation filters or electrical system failures. A breadcrumb could even cause health problems if inhaled by an astronaut or space tourist.

In past missions, crumb-less bread solutions, as developed by NASA, have been unappetizing, to say the least. After crews on the Mercury and Gemini missions snuck sandwiches on board, astronaut food supplies included pre-cut bread cubes coated in gelatin to encapsulate the crumbs. Eventually, bread was removed from the equation entirely and replaced with tortillas space shuttle era missions.

Bake in Space will attempt to make a type of German bread roll using a unique dough and a small convection or vacuum oven that requires little power. In a video recorded earlier this year, astronaut Shane Kimbrough explained from aboard the space station, The first thing we need for a sandwich is a piece of bread. Well, up here, we dont have bread like you have on Earth, but we have tortillas. So we use tortillas a lot for our sandwiches.

However, breadcrumbs alone are not the only difficulties Bake in Space will face in testing their new bread dough. The dough must produce a bread that is not only nutritious but also enjoyable to consume and emotionally satisfying, emitting the warm and pleasant smell of freshly baked bread. A goal described on the companys website: Besides [being] a source for nutrition, the smell of fresh bread evokes memories of general happiness and is an important psychological factor. It is a symbol of recreational time and procedure down on Earth.

This is the biggest challenge, agreed Florian Stukenborg with the research firm TTZ Bremerhaven. Similar food-based experiments have already been performed previously for fresh produce grown in a plant chamber called Veggie, and a microgravity coffee makes called ISSPresso. Besides baking bread, Bake in Space also hopes to form a sourdough batter in space, which will later be baked on Earth and become the first space-born loaf sold on the planet.

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Baking Experiments on International Space Station - TrendinTech

(Picture: Andrei Borisenko via 501st Legion Russian Outpost Facebook page)

The 501st Legion, also known as Vaders First, is an international group of fans who create and wear the costumes of Star Wars villains.

Now it seems theyve made their mark on space and a picture has emerged to prove it.

When theSoyuz MS-02 spacecraft headed off to orbit and dock with the International Space Station on October 20 last year it carried not onlythree members of the Expedition 49 crew (cosmonauts commanderSergey Nikolayevich Ryzhikov and flight engineers Andrei Borisenko and American astronautRobert S Kimbrough) but, apparently, also a very special and unique cargo.

Travelling 118 kilometers over 173 days and completing 2768 orbits of planet Earth, this cargo was not only relevant to the mission itself, but also to Star Wars fans across the globe.

According to the 501st Legion Russian Outpost Facebook page, Borisenko took the above picture of a patch.

The patch in question was designed by the 501st Legion Russian Outpost, which covers the Russian Federation and its 19 members.

The 501st is spread across the planet, from the smallest garrison the 27 strong Czech Garrison to the largest, the 739 strong German Garrison.

There are 11,453 members worldwide, and in 2016 they raised nearly 694,000 for a variety of charities worldwide.

The 502-strong UK Garrison logged 42,000 man-hours of community service and raised over 31,000, the largest contribution in Europe.

Its not the first time a Star Wars-related item has gone into space.

Forgetting Ronald Reagans infamous Star Wars strategic defence initiative, back in 2007 Luke Skywalkers original lightsaber from Return Of The Jedi headed north and into space onboard the Space Shuttle, STS-120.

Launching from the Kennedy Space Center on 23rd October 2007 the shuttle orbited Earth 238 times during its 15-day mission.

Day 12 saw the main Star Wars theme blast out for the days wake up call and the lightsaber stowed safely for the length of the mission before being displayed at Houston Space Center.

With the return of the saga to worldwide prominence it surely cant be long before an item from the new series of films makes its way into space.

Maybe the International Space Station will one day boast Kylo Rens lightsaber, or the dice from the Millennium Falcon.

Metro Blogs is a place for opinions. These opinions belong to the author and are not necessarily shared by Metro.

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Star Wars fans make their mark on the International Space Station - Metro

A robotic Russian cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station Friday (June 16), delivering tons of fresh food and other supplies for the orbiting lab's crew.

The Progress 67 spacecraft linked up with the space station in a smooth docking at 7:37 a.m. EDT (1137 GMT) as both vehicles sailed 258 miles (415 kilometers) over the Philippine Sea.

"Progress completes as smooth a journey as you can imagine," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said during live commentary. [The Space Station's Robotic Cargo Ship Fleet (Photo Guide)]

The Russian-built Progress 67 (far left) is seen by an HD camera on the International Space Station just before docking to deliver 3 tons of supplies for the outpost's crew on June 16, 2017.

The Progress spacecraft is carrying more than 3 tons (2.7 metric tons) of fresh food, fuel and other vital supplies for the space station's Expedition 52 crew. The craft parked itself at the aft end of the station's Russian-built Zvezda service module.

"The cargo vehicle is now in a gentle, but very firm embrace thanks to the station," cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin of Russia, who commands the station's Expedition 52 crew, radioed in Russian to flight controllers at Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

Progress 67 is the third robotic cargo ship to either arrive at or depart from the space station in recent weeks. On Sunday (June 11), an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship re-entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up as planned to end its resupply mission. A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the space station on June 5 and is expected to parachute back to Earth on July 2.

Progress 67 launched to the station Wednesday (June 16) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, sparking a deadly fire that killed one worker and injured another at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. A fragment of the Soyuz rocket that launched the cargo ship ignited grass on the Kazakh steppes, starting the blaze, according to a BBC News report.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him@tariqjmalikandGoogle+.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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Space Station Welcomes Food and Supplies from Russian Ship - Space.com