Category Archives: Space Station

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See International Space Station Tonight In Western Washington ... Patch.com Seattle, WA - Clear skies tonight will give Puget Sound residents two chances to catch a glimpse of the International Space Station. International Space Station visible tonight - MyDaytonDailyNews.comMyDaytonDailyNews all 2 news articles »

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See International Space Station Tonight In Western Washington ... - Patch.com

First Privately Funded Commercial Airlock for Space Station Planned

"The installation of NanoRacks' commercial airlock will help us keep up with demand," said Boeing International Space Station program Manager Mark Mulqueen. "This is a big step in facilitating commercial business on the ISS."

Boeing and NanoRacks LLC, a company based in Webster, Texas, announced Feb. 6 they will partner to develop the first privately funded commercial airlock for the International Space Station. The airlock would allow for potentially tripling the number of small satellites that can be deploy from the station during a single airlock cycle, they reported.

They hope to attach the NanoRacks Airlock Module to the U.S. station segment in 2019. Boeing will build and install the airlock's Passive Common Berthing Mechanism, the hardware used to connect the pressurized modules of the space station, which currently uses the airlock on the station's Japanese Experiment Module.

The new, commercial airlock will be larger. "The installation of NanoRacks' commercial airlock will help us keep up with demand," said Boeing International Space Station program Manager Mark Mulqueen. "This is a big step in facilitating commercial business on the ISS."

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First Privately Funded Commercial Airlock for Space Station Planned - Occupational Health and Safety

Humans wont survive on Mars for very long if they dont learn to grow their own food. Thats why we need to answer the question: What, if anything, can grow on the red planet?

A two-year experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) gives us some hints. A species of green algae and photosynthesizing bacteria have survived their 450-day stay in outer space. All but one of the algae samples started growing after being returned to Earth.

The experiment was part of the Biology and Mars Experiment (BIOMEX) to understand to what extent terrestrial life can survive in space. It involved a series of pockets where hundreds of specimens of bacteria, fungi, lichens, algae, and mosses were exposed to conditions of near vacuum, temperatures between -4 F (-20 C) and 116 F (47 C), and a continuous blast of ultraviolet radiation.

The BIOMEX lab was sent back to Earth in June 2016, and we are starting to get the results. Researchers are now analyzing the DNA of what survived to look for what kind of damage it may have suffered.

The surviving algae belonged to the Sphaerocystis species, found in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago, and the cyanobacteria to the Nostoc species, found in Antarctica. The species were selected because they are known to withstand extreme cold. The algae species protects itself by entering a dormant state, forming thick walls and orange cysts rich in cartenoids, which is the chemical that gives carrots its color and is known to be protective against radiation. These species is now being added to the small but growing list of terrestrial organisms that can survive space, which include lichens, bacteria, and water bears (tardigrades).

A practical lesson from these survivalists could help us farm on Mars. Algae produce proteins and oxygen, both key ingredients for surviving once humans leave the blue planet.

The survivors could also help us understand how life on Earth began. The leading hypothesis is that life emerged spontaneously from just the right mix of chemicals and environmental conditions, but there is also the possibility that it may have been delivered to Earth by meteorites or comets. Such life would have needed to survive harsh conditions of space en route, which is why the BIOMEX results support the hypothesis.

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An algae that survived two years in outer space may hold the secret to growing food on Mars - Quartz

SpaceX's upcoming Falcon 9 rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center will carry a host of science experiments to the International Space Station, aside from the SAGE III instrument to study Earth's atmosphere.

They include:

The Lightning Imagining Sensor, or LIS, will sample lightning over a wider geographic area than any previous instrument. Lightning strikes occur around the globe at a rate of 45 per second, said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division in a media call Wednesday afternoon. LIS will help measure the amount, rate and energy of those strikes, improve our understanding of their weather effects and offer insight into weather forecasting, climate change, atmospheric chemistry and physics and aircraft and spacecraft safety. LIS was developed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and the University of Alabama.

The "Nanobiosym" experiment will try to learn how microgravity affects the growth and mutation of a superbug. Superbugs are germs or bacteria that can rapidly mutate and become resistant to antibiotics, said Anita Goel, scientific director of the project. "By using microgravity in space as an incubator," she said, "we can better predict what these mutations might look like. ... Do these bacteria grow faster and mutate faster in a microgravity environment? And, if so, why?" What they learn could help to develop better drug treatment. Space station crew isn't at risk of exposure, she said, because the entire system will be contained.

"Raven" is a step toward robotic missions far from Earth developing a navigation and rendezvous technology to get humans out of the loop, said Ben Reed, a deputy division director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Once installed on the ISS, the Raven module will observe the range, bearing and pose of every visiting vehicle as it approaches, then gimbal or pivot autonomously for rendezvous.

"The next era that we are bridging toward now," Reed said, "is going to be, in our view, dominated by missions where you have satellites being upgraded, being serviced, being refueled, being relocated, being assembled in orbit." Autonomous systems will benefit not only NASA's ambitions for deep-space missions to Mars or an asteroid, he said, but commercial missions, too.

Growing better crystals in space could help develop better treatments for a wide range of ills on Earth, from cancer to asthma, infections to high cholesterol. To that end, Merck Research Laboratories will be growing crystalline monoclonal antibodies on the space station or molecules designed to attach to other molecules in the body to help fight various diseases. Microgravity is an ideal environment for growing crystals that are "larger, more uniform and higher purity than Earth-grown crystals," said Paul Reichart, an associate principal scientist at Merck. Depending on their success, he said, such antibodies might one day be manufactured in space.

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More science heading to the International Space Station - Daily Press

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Valentine's Space Station updated: Feb 11, 2017, 3:00 PM

By Chuck McPartlin

The International Space Station is back. This list just includes the best Santa Barbara evening passes, which are subject to changes in the orbit of the ISS. To get the latest predictions, visit Heavens Above.

The first two appearances are brief. On Saturday, February 11, the ISS will rise at 6:48 PM in the NNW, and skim very low over our mountain horizon, below the bowl of the Little Dipper, and enter the Earths shadow just before reaching the handle of the Big Dipper in the NNE at 6:48 PM.

On Sunday, it will rise in the NW at 7:30 PM and quickly vanish at 7:31 as it reaches Cepheus.

On Monday at 6:38 PM, the station will rise in the NNW, pass over our mountain horizon through the bowl of the Little Dipper and the Big Dipper, and fade out in the NE at 6:41 PM.

For Valentines Day, the ISS appears in the NW at 7:21 PM, cruises up toward the zenith, and disappears at 7:24 PM before reaching the Pleiades. How many of the sisters can you see?

The best showing of this sequence occurs on Wednesday, when it rises in the NW at 6:29 PM, passes high over our mountain horizon, just missing the heads of Gemini, Castor and Pollux, and then visits bright Procyon before setting in the ESE at 6:35 PM.

On Thursday, the space station will rise at 7:13 PM in the WNW, and sail low over our ocean horizon under Venus and Mars to fade away well below Orion in the S at 7:18 PM. Near where the ISS disappeared, can you spot the second brightest star in the sky, Canopus, just barely peeking over the islands?

On Friday, February 17, the ISS will pop up in the WNW at 6:20 PM, and fly over Venus and Mars, below Orion and Canis Major, to set in the SE at 6:28 PM.

We wont see it on Saturday, but it will start a dim finale on Sunday at 6:12 PM in the W, passing low below Venus and Mars to set below Orion in the S at 6:17 PM. It will then transition to our early morning sky before returning to more civilized timing, at least for night owls, near the end of March.

Hasta nebula - Chuck

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Valentine's Space Station - Astronomy - Santa Barbara Edhat - Santa Barbara Edhat

The International Space Station will soon be getting some new robot occupants. Astrobee is a robotic cube packed with sensors, cameras, computers, and apropulsion system. Its designed tohelp astronauts around the ISS with a variety of tasks.

While the robot is designed to fly freely on board the ISS, for testing on the ground, Astrobee is mounted on top of a sled that uses a jet of CO2 to create a low-friction air bearing above a perfectly flat (and very enormous) block of granite. This allows the researchers to simulate microgravity in two dimensions to test the robots propulsion and navigation systems, but once its up in space, the entire robot will consist of just the cube thats defined by the blue bumpers, without all of the stuff underneath it.

Last fall, IEEE Spectrum visited NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., to have a look at the latest Astrobee prototype and meet the team behind the robot.

NASA expects to have Astrobee on orbit at some point between July 2017 and June 2018. Theyll be sending three of them to the ISS, although they only expect two robots to be active at once: The third will be packed away in a space closet somewhere.

Read More: How NASA's Astrobee Robot Is Bringing Useful Autonomy to the ISS

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Astrobee: NASA's Newest Robot for the International Space Station - IEEE Spectrum

February 10, 2017 by Ken Kremer, Universe Today Artists concept of first commercially funded airlock on the space station being developed by NanoRacks that will launch on a commercial resupply mission in 2019. It will be installed on the stations Tranquility module. Credit: NanoRacks

In a significant move towards further expansion of the International Space Station's (ISS) burgeoning research and commercial space economy capabilities, NASA has approved the development of the first privately developed airlock and is targeting blastoff to the orbiting lab complex in two years.

Plans call for the commercial airlock to be launched on a commercial cargo vessel and installed on the U.S. segment of the ISS in 2019.

It enhances the US capability to place equipment and payloads outside and should triple the number of small satellites like CubeSats able to be deployed.

The privately funded commercial airlock is being developed by Nanoracks in partnership with Boeing, which is the prime contractor for the space station.

The airlock will be installed on an open port on the Tranquility module that already is home to the seven windowed domed Cupola observation deck and the commercial BEAM expandable module built by Bigelow Aerospace.

"We want to utilize the space station to expose the commercial sector to new and novel uses of space, ultimately creating a new economy in low-Earth orbit for scientific research, technology development and human and cargo transportation," said Sam Scimemi, director, ISS Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement.

"We hope this new airlock will allow a diverse community to experiment and develop opportunities in space for the commercial sector."

The airlock will launch aboard one of NASA's commercial cargo suppliers in 2019. But the agency has not specified which contractor. The candidates include the SpaceX cargo Dragon, an enhanced ATK Cygnus or potentially the yet to fly SNC Dream Chaser.

Boeing will supply the airlock's Passive Common Berthing Mechanism (CBM) hardware to connect it to the Tranquility module.

The airlock will beef up the capability of transferring equipment, payloads and deployable satellites from inside the ISS to outside, significantly increasing the utilization of ISS, says Boeing.

"The International Space Station allows NASA to conduct cutting-edge research and technology demonstrations for the next giant leap in human exploration and supports an emerging space economy in low-Earth orbit. Deployment of CubeSats and other small satellite payloads from the orbiting laboratory by commercial customers and NASA has increased in recent years. To support demand, NASA has accepted a proposal from NanoRacks to develop the first commercially funded airlock on the space station," says NASA.

"The installation of NanoRacks' commercial airlock will help us keep up with demand," said Boeing International Space Station program manager Mark Mulqueen. "This is a big step in facilitating commercial business on the ISS."

Right now the US uses the airlock on the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) to place payloads on the stations exterior as well as for small satellite deployments. But the demand is outstripping the JEM's availability.

The Nanoracks airlock will be larger and more robust to take up the slack.

NASA has stipulated that the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), NASA's manager of the U.S. National Laboratory on the space station, will be responsible for coordinating all payload deployments from the commercial airlock NASA and non NASA.

"We are entering a new chapter in the space station program where the private sector is taking on more responsibilities. We see this as only the beginning and are delighted to team with our friends at Boeing," said Jeffrey Manber, CEO of NanoRacks.

Explore further: Image: Small satellite deployed from the Space Station

A satellite is ejected from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Small Satellite Orbital Deployer on the International Space Station on Dec. 19, 2016. The satellite is actually two small satellites that, once at ...

Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams(shown here) and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins of NASAsuccessfully installed the first of two international docking adapters (IDAs) Friday Aug. 19, 2016, during a five hour and 58-minute ...

CubeSats fly free after leaving the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer on the International Space Station on May 17, 2016. Seen here are two Dove satellites.

NASA, Astrium Space Transportation and NanoRacks LLC are teaming up to expand the research capability of the International Space Station through delivery of a small commercial centrifuge facility that will conduct molecular ...

Scheduled for launch in November, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is travelling the world preparing for his six-month adventure on the International Space Station. At NASA's Johnson Space Center, in Houston, USA, Thomas is putting ...

It used to be that building and launching a working satellite was an enormously expensive and complex undertaking, feasible only for governmental and military agencies. But the CubeSat revolution of the past decade has placed ...

The Andromeda constellation is one of the 88 modern constellations and should not be confused with our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy. The Andromeda constellation is home to the pictured galaxy known as NGC 7640.

A team of scientists at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland recently completed a technology demonstration that could enable new scientific missions to the surface of Venus. The team demonstrated the first prolonged ...

Many scientists believe the Earth was dry when it first formed, and that the building blocks for life on our planetcarbon, nitrogen and waterappeared only later as a result of collisions with other objects in our solar ...

For years, their existence has been debated: elusive electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere that sport names such as red sprites, blue jets, pixies and elves. Reported by pilots, they are difficult to study as they ...

For astronomers trying to understand which distant planets might have habitable conditions, the role of atmospheric haze has been hazy. To help sort it out, a team of researchers has been looking to Earth specifically ...

On Feb. 9, 2017, NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, known as MMS, began a three-month long journey into a new orbit. MMS flies in a highly elliptical orbit around Earth and the new orbit will take MMS twice as far ...

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NASA approves first commercial airlock for space station science and SmallSat deployment - Phys.Org

A group including local iLEAD charter school students from Castaic celebrated an out-of-this-world lesson plan Friday with Californias Secretary of State. Dont miss a thing. Get breakingKHTS Santa Clarita News Alertsdelivered right to your inbox.

A team of four middle school students from iLEAD Pacoima are sending an experiment to the International Space Station as part of the national Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) Mission 11 project, the school announced today.

The group included students from Santa Clarita Valley International School (SCVi), iLEAD Lancaster, iLEAD Pacoima, iLEAD Encino and iLEAD Innovation Studios.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who grew up Pacoima, spoke at the assembly. Padilla was joined by Assemblyman Dante Acosta, as well as a representative from Senator Scott Wilks office.

It was nice to have so much support from our elected officials for these public charter schools, and iLEAD in particular, Dawn Evenson, executive director of education for iLEAD schools.

Learners ranging in age from 11 to 17 were tasked with developing experiments that compare how something behaves in microgravity which is what astronauts experience on board the International Space Station with how that same object responds in gravity.

The Pacoima team was selected by SSEPs National Step 2 Review Board from a slate of three experiments submitted by iLEAD charter schools across Los Angeles County.

The project helps students understand the effects of microgravity to support space exploration.

In addition, all learners and facilitators from any iLEAD campus whose project passed Step One review were recognized honored, as will learners who participated in the schools mission patch contest.

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (or SSEP) is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in the United States, and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally.

The program is enabled through a strategic partnership with DreamUp PBC and NanoRacks LLC, which are working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.

SSEP is the first pre-college STEM education program that is both a U.S. national initiative and implemented as an on-orbit commercial space venture.

The winning team is examining the effects of microgravity on yeast an idea spawned by one students family pizza business.

Their experiment calls for the astronauts onboard the International Space Station to activate yeast within a tube-like Fluid Mixing Enclosure (FME). After two days, the astronauts will introduce a fixative to stop the experiment. Simultaneously, the iLEAD Learners will be doing the same thing on Earth. When the FME returns from the space station, the students will compare how the yeast behaved in both environments by examining its spore count.

The targeted launch date for Mission 11 is spring/summer 2017.

Amber Raskin, executive director of business development and operations and co-founder of the iLEAD schools alongside Evenson, noted this was the type of educational opportunity they had in mind when the schools were created.

This project, Raskin said, represents exactly the kind of unique, hands-on learning experiences offered throughout the iLEAD programs and public charter schools throughout the state.

Link:
Castaic iLEAD Students Join International Space Station Project - KHTS Radio

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An astronaut captured the first video from the International Space Station (ISS) ofmysterious electrical discharges dubbed blue jets.

NASA is cooperating with the European Space Agency (ESA) to take pictures and video of the jets from the ISS using special cameras. The strange flashes can be more than half a mile wide and typically occur about 11 to 12 miles above the ground. They appear to be a strange weather phenomenon that hasnt been fully explained.

It is not every day that you get to capture a new weather phenomenon on film, so I am very pleased with the result but even more so that researchers will be able to investigate these intriguing thunderstorms in more detail soon,Andreas Mogensen, an ESA astronaut who filmed the jets from the ISS, said in a press statement.

WATCH: Satellites have previously attemptedto study the blue jets, but their viewing angle was not ideal.The ISS sits in a much lower orbit around Earth than most satellites, making it an ideal place to studythe jets.

NASA suspects that the blue jets are examples of a little-understood part of our atmosphere interacting with electrical storms. The research has implications for how our atmosphere protects Earth from radiation.

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NASA Can't Explain Mysterious 'Blue Jet' Spotted Near Space Station [VIDEO] - Daily Caller

Universe Today

NASA Approves First Commercial Airlock for Space Station Science and SmallSat Deployment Universe Today In a significant move towards further expansion of the International Space Station's (ISS) burgeoning research and commercial space economy capabilities, NASA has approved the development of the first privately developed airlock and is targeting ... Weslaco students to speak with NASA astronaut on space station ...Monitor NASA confirms astronaut threw football 564664 yards while on board the International Space StationMirror.co.uk Watch an Astronaut Throw the Longest Hail Mary at the International ...Travel+Leisure San Angelo Standard Times -The Marshalltown -Popular Science all 17 news articles »

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NASA Approves First Commercial Airlock for Space Station Science and SmallSat Deployment - Universe Today