Category Archives: Space Station

As the Paralympic Games kicked off in Tokyo this week, astronauts at the International Space Station celebrated the quadrennial sporting event in space.

On the opening day of the Tokyo Paralympic Games on Tuesday (Aug. 24), Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy posted a photo on Twitter showing the current seven occupants of the International Space Station (ISS) posing with a "torch" inside one of the station's modules under a ceiling decorated with national flags.

The torch, which appears golden in the image, of course, is not burning.

"The torch itself is a bundle of five tubes in the form of sakura petals with gold trim," Novitskiy said in the Tweet. "The ISS-65 Expedition crew wishes all the participants good luck!"

Related: Watch astronauts hold their own Summer Olympics in space with zero-g synchronized swimming and more

The 2020 Summer Paralympic Games, postponed from last year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, officially kicked off Tuesday (Aug 24) and will close on Sept. 5. About 4,400 athletes with various types of disabilities representing 162 nations will participate in the games.

While astronaut candidates have traditionally been required to be fully able-bodied people, the space station might soon welcome its first "parastronaut." Earlier this year, the European Space Agency (ESA) invited qualified experts with certain types of disabilities to apply for a special astronaut feasibility study. The agency launched the call for astronauts with disabilities together with its current astronaut recruitment round in February.

The current ISS crew including Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov, NASA's Mark Vende Hei, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Europe's Thomas Pesquet, and Japan's Akihiko Hoshide have previously held their own Olympic Summer Games.

Split into two teams based on the vehicle that took them to the space station the Soyuz MS-18 and Dragon Crew 2 the seven astronauts competed in several unique microgravity disciplines. In a video that has since gone viral, the teams performed competitive routines in synchronized space "swimming," complete with weightless tumbling and flipping. The crew members also competed in individual events, including no-floor gymnastics, and the game of "no-hand ball," which required them to pass a ping pong ball through a hatch only by blowing at it. In space sharpshooting, the sportsmen were trying to hit a target with a rubber band.

The crew later held an Olympic closing ceremony during which Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide passed the torch to France's Thomas Pesquet. The next Olympic Games will be held in France's capital Paris in 2024.

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Astronauts celebrate Tokyo Paralympics opening day with 'torch' ceremony in space - Space.com

Over the last couple of years, NASA has increasingly relied on outside companies to complete tasks that have traditionally been reserved for the government agency.

Under its Commercial Resupply Services program, NASA has contracts with SpaceX and Northrop Grumman to send cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station. Last year, SpaceX made history by becoming the first private sector company to carry NASA astronauts to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. NASA is now hoping to replicate the success of its commercial crew and commercial cargo programs with the Commercial LEO Destinations project.

As part of the project, NASA plans to award up to $400 million in total to as many as four companies to begin development of private space stations. Covering part of the developmental costs of the station would be a big money saver for NASA. The ISS cost $150 billion to build, and the U.S. picked up the largest chunk of that bill ahead of its partners, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. NASA also spends about $4 billion a year to operate the ISS.

"We've had all these years of success on the ISS, and NASA now wants to put our eye toward moon and Mars and other exploration items and turn over this area of space to the commercial market," says Angela Hart, manager of the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Program Office at NASA.

A number of companies, including Colorado-based Sierra Space and Houston-based Axiom Space, are already well on their way to launching private space stations.Watch the video to find out more.

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Here's why NASA may depend on outside companies for its next space outpost - CNBC

A company was just tasked to build the station's life support systems.Moonraker?

Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of military and aerospace contractor Raytheon Technologies, is working on environmental control and life support technologies for a privately owned and operated low Earth orbit outpost, according to SpaceNews.

Theres plenty of money being poured into developing a commercial presence in space right now. The small firm was awarded a $2.6 million contract by a mysterious unnamed customer a sign, in spite of its opacity, that the race to commercial orbit is heating up.

The Collins work includes machines capable of controlling both temperature and pressure levels in space enabling a prolonged human presence, according to SpaceNews reporting.

The subsidiary already has plenty of experience to draw from. In fact, its behind the International Space Stations current water recovery system.

Shawn Macleod, Collins Aerospaces director of business development, told SpaceNews that as more private industry destinations become available, the demand for life support systems will increase.

There is a non-zero chance that the unnamed contractor is Axiom Space, according to SpaceNews analysis. The Houston-based, privately funded space company is planning to construct its own commercial space station.

The company also announced the crew for the worlds first entirely-private mission into orbit back in January, on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

But whether Axiom Space is behind the Collins contract remains unclear. The company declined SpaceNews request for comment.

READ MORE: Collins Aerospace to provide life support for privately run LEO outpost [SpaceNews]

More on Axios Space: First Entirely-Private Mission to Space Station Names Its Crew

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Someone Is Secretly Working on "Privately Owned" Space Station - Futurism

Nevertheless, while computer chips won't burn a literal hole in your pocket (though they do get hot enough to fry an egg), they still require a lot of current to run the applications we use every day. Consider the data-center SoC: On average, it's consuming 200 W to provide its transistors with about 1 to 2 volts, which means the chip is drawing 100 to 200 amperes of current from the voltage regulators that supply it. Your typical refrigerator draws only 6 A. High-end mobile phones can draw a tenth as much power as data-center SoCs, but even so that's still about 1020 A of current. That's up to three refrigerators, in your pocket!

Delivering that current to billions of transistors is quickly becoming one of the major bottlenecks in high-performance SoC design. As transistors continue to be made tinier, the interconnects that supply them with current must be packed ever closer and be made ever finer, which increases resistance and saps power. This can't go on: Without a big change in the way electrons get to and from devices on a chip, it won't matter how much smaller we can make transistors.

In today's processors both signals and power reach the silicon [light gray] from above. New technology would separate those functions, saving power and making more room for signal routes [right].Chris Philpot

Fortunately, we have a promising solution: We can use a side of the silicon that's long been ignored.

Electrons have to travel a long way to get from the source that is generating them to the transistors that compute with them. In most electronics they travel along the copper traces of a printed circuit board into a package that holds the SoC, through the solder balls that connect the chip to the package, and then via on-chip interconnects to the transistors themselves. It's this last stage that really matters.

To see why, it helps to understand how chips are made. An SoC starts as a bare piece of high-quality, crystalline silicon. We first make a layer of transistors at the very top of that silicon. Next we link them together with metal interconnects to form circuits with useful computing functions. These interconnects are formed in layers called a stack, and it can take a 10-to-20-layer stack to deliver power and data to the billions of transistors on today's chips.

Those layers closest to the silicon transistors are thin and small in order to connect to the tiny transistors, but they grow in size as you go up in the stack to higher levels. It's these levels with broader interconnects that are better at delivering power because they have less resistance.

Today, both power and signals reach transistors from a network of interconnects above the silicon (the "front side"). But increasing resistance as these interconnects are scaled down to ever-finer dimensions is making that scheme untenable.Chris Philpot

You can see, then, that the metal that powers circuitsthe power delivery network (PDN)is on top of the transistors. We refer to this as front-side power delivery. You can also see that the power network unavoidably competes for space with the network of wires that delivers signals, because they share the same set of copper resources.

In order to get power and signals off of the SoC, we typically connect the uppermost layer of metalfarthest away from the transistorsto solder balls (also called bumps) in the chip package. So for electrons to reach any transistor to do useful work, they have to traverse 10 to 20 layers of increasingly narrow and tortuous metal until they can finally squeeze through to the very last layer of local wires.

This way of distributing power is fundamentally lossy. At every stage along the path, some power is lost, and some must be used to control the delivery itself. In today's SoCs, designers typically have a budget that allows loss that leads to a 10 percent reduction in voltage between the package and the transistors. Thus, if we hit a total efficiency of 90 percent or greater in a power-delivery network, our designs are on the right track.

Historically, such efficiencies have been achievable with good engineeringsome might even say it was easy compared to the challenges we face today. In today's electronics, SoC designers not only have to manage increasing power densities but to do so with interconnects that are losing power at a sharply accelerating rate with each new generation.

You can design a back-side power delivery network that's up to seven times as efficient as the traditional front-side network.

The increasing lossiness has to do with how we make nanoscale wires. That process and its accompanying materials trace back to about 1997, when IBM began to make interconnects out of copper instead of aluminum, and the industry shifted along with it. Up until then aluminum wires had been fine conductors, but in a few more steps along the Moore's Law curve their resistance would soon be too high and become unreliable. Copper is more conductive at modern IC scales. But even copper's resistance began to be problematic once interconnect widths shrank below 100 nanometers. Today, the smallest manufactured interconnects are about 20 nm, so resistance is now an urgent issue.

It helps to picture the electrons in an interconnect as a full set of balls on a billiards table. Now imagine shoving them all from one end of the table toward another. A few would collide and bounce against each other on the way, but most would make the journey in a straight-ish line. Now consider shrinking the table by halfyou'd get a lot more collisions and the balls would move more slowly. Next, shrink it again and increase the number of billiard balls tenfold, and you're in something like the situation chipmakers face now. Real electrons don't collide, necessarily, but they get close enough to one another to impose a scattering force that disrupts the flow through the wire. At nanoscale dimensions, this leads to vastly higher resistance in the wires, which induces significant power-delivery loss.

Increasing electrical resistance is not a new challenge, but the magnitude of increase that we are seeing now with each subsequent process node is unprecedented. Furthermore, traditional ways of managing this increase are no longer an option, because the manufacturing rules at the nanoscale impose so many constraints. Gone are the days when we could arbitrarily increase the widths of certain wires in order to combat increasing resistance. Now designers have to stick to certain specified wire widths or else the chip may not be manufacturable. So, the industry is faced with the twin problems of higher resistance in interconnects and less room for them on the chip.

There is another way: We can exploit the "empty" silicon that lies below the transistors. At Imec, where authors Beyne and Zografos work, we have pioneered a manufacturing concept called "buried power rails," or BPR. The technique builds power connections below the transistors instead of above them, with the aim of creating fatter, less resistant rails and freeing space for signal-carrying interconnects above the transistor layer.

To reduce the resistance in power delivery, transistors will tap power rails buried within the silicon. These are relatively large, low-resistance conductors that multiple logic cells could connect with.Chris Philpot

To build BPRs, you first have to dig out deep trenches below the transistors and then fill them with metal. You have to do this before you make the transistors themselves. So the metal choice is important. That metal will need to withstand the processing steps used to make high-quality transistors, which can reach about 1,000 C. At that temperature, copper is molten, and melted copper could contaminate the whole chip. We've therefore experimented with ruthenium and tungsten, which have higher melting points.

Since there is so much unused space below the transistors, you can make the BPR trenches wide and deep, which is perfect for delivering power. Compared to the thin metal layers directly on top of the transistors, BPRs can have 1/20 to 1/30 the resistance. That means that BPRs will effectively allow you to deliver more power to the transistors.

Furthermore, by moving the power rails off the top side of the transistors you free up room for the signal-carrying interconnects. These interconnects form fundamental circuit "cells"the smallest circuit units, such as SRAM memory bit cells or simple logic that we use to compose more complex circuits. By using the space we've freed up, we could shrink those cells by 16 percent or more, and that could ultimately translate to more transistors per chip. Even if feature size stayed the same, we'd still push Moore's Law one step further.

Unfortunately, it looks like burying local power rails alone won't be enough. You still have to convey power to those rails down from the top side of the chip, and that will cost efficiency and some loss of voltage.

Gone are the days when we could arbitrarily increase the widths of certain wires in order to combat increasing resistance.

Researchers at Arm, including authors Cline and Prasad, ran a simulation on one of their CPUs and found that, by themselves, BPRs could allow you to build a 40 percent more efficient power network than an ordinary front-side power delivery network. But they also found that even if you used BPRs with front-side power delivery, the overall voltage delivered to the transistors was not high enough to sustain high-performance operation of a CPU.

Luckily, Imec was simultaneously developing a complementary solution to further improve power delivery: Move the entire power-delivery network from the front side of the chip to the back side. This solution is called "back-side power delivery," or more generally "back-side metallization." It involves thinning down the silicon that is underneath the transistors to 500 nm or less, at which point you can create nanometer-size "through-silicon vias," or nano-TSVs. These are vertical interconnects that can connect up through the back side of the silicon to the bottom of the buried rails, like hundreds of tiny mineshafts. Once the nano-TSVs have been created below the transistors and BPRs, you can then deposit additional layers of metal on the back side of the chip to form a complete power-delivery network.

Expanding on our earlier simulations, we at Arm found that just two layers of thick back-side metal was enough to do the job. As long as you could space the nano-TSVs closer than 2 micrometers from each other, you could design a back-side PDN that was four times as efficient as the front-side PDN with buried power rails and seven times as efficient as the traditional front-side PDN.

The back-side PDN has the additional advantage of being physically separated from the signal network, so the two networks no longer compete for the same metal-layer resources. There's more room for each. It also means that the metal layer characteristics no longer need to be a compromise between what power routes prefer (thick and wide for low resistance) and what signal routes prefer (thin and narrow so they can make circuits from densely packed transistors). You can simultaneously tune the back-side metal layers for power routing and the front-side metal layers for signal routing and get the best of both worlds.

Moving the power delivery network to the other side of the siliconthe back side"reduces voltage loss even more, because all the interconnects in the network can be made thicker to lower resistance. What's more, removing the power-delivery network from above the silicon leaves more room for signal routes, leading to even smaller logic circuits and letting chipmakers squeeze more transistors into the same area of silicon.Chris Philpot/IMEC

In our designs at Arm, we found that for both the traditional front-side PDN and front-side PDN with buried power rails, we had to sacrifice design performance. But with back-side PDN the CPU was able to achieve high frequencies and have electrically efficient power delivery.

You might, of course, be wondering how you get signals and power from the package to the chip in such a scheme. The nano-TSVs are the key here, too. They can be used to transfer all input and output signals from the front side to the back side of the chip. That way, both the power and the I/O signals can be attached to solder balls that are placed on the back side.

Simulation studies are a great start, and they show the CPU-design-level potential of back-side PDNs with BPR. But there is a long road ahead to bring these technologies to high-volume manufacturing. There are still significant materials and manufacturing challenges that need to be solved. The best choice of metal materials for the BPRs and nano-TSVs is critical to manufacturability and electrical efficiency. Also, the high-aspect-ratio (deep but skinny) trenches needed for both BPRs and nano-TSVs are very difficult to make. Reliably etching tightly spaced, deep-but-narrow features in the silicon substrate and filling them with metal is relatively new to chip manufacture and is still something the industry is getting to grips with. Developing manufacturing tools and methods that are reliable and repeatable will be essential to unlocking widespread adoption of nano-TSVs.

Furthermore, battery-powered SoCs, like those in your phone and in other power-constrained designs, already have much more sophisticated power-delivery networks than those we've discussed so far. Modern-day power delivery separates chips into multiple power domains that can operate at different voltages or even be turned off altogether to conserve power. (See "A Circuit to Boost Battery Life," IEEE Spectrum, August 2021.)

In tests of multiple designs using three varieties of power delivery, only back-side power with buried power rails [red] provides enough voltage without compromising performance.Chris Philpot

Thus, back-side PDNs and BPRs are eventually going to have to do much more than just efficiently deliver electrons. They're going to have to precisely control where electrons go and how many of them get there. Chip designers will not want to take multiple steps backward when it comes to chip-level power design. So we will have to simultaneously optimize design and manufacturing to make sure that BPRs and back-side PDNs are better thanor at least compatible withthe power-saving IC techniques we use today.

The future of computing depends upon these new manufacturing techniques. Power consumption is crucial whether you're worrying about the cooling bill for a data center or the number of times you have to charge your smartphone each day. And as we continue to shrink transistors and ICs, delivering power becomes a significant on-chip challenge. BPR and back-side PDNs may well answer that challenge if engineers can overcome the complexities that come with them.

This article appears in the September 2021 print issue as "Power From Below."

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Nauka's Troubled FlightBefore It Tumbled the ISS - IEEE Spectrum

The Philippines has made yet another historic mark in the field of space exploration!

Maya-3 and Maya-4, the countrys own cube satellites or CubeSats, are set to be launched off to the International Space Station this Saturday afternoon.

READ:Maya-2, Philippines2nd CubeSat, has been launched to space station!

According to Space Technology and Applications Mastery, Innovation, and Advancement (STAMINA4Space) Programs announcement on Facebook, Friday, the two CubeSats are set to leave Earth aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a Dragon C208 cargo as part of the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Mission.

The two satellites mission, as mentioned in STAMINA4Spaces website, is to demonstrate image and video capture of the RGB camera using a 5MP commercial-off-the-shelf RGB camera as well as demonstrate ground data acquisition using Store and Forward capability of the CubeSat which will allow collection of data from remote ground sensors such as temperature, humidity and wind speed, among many other tasks.

Maya-3 and Maya-4 are the first Philippine university-built satellites designed and developed by the first batch of scholars under the STAMINA4Space Program: Project 3 - Space Science and Technology Proliferation through University Partnerships (STeP-UP).

It is under the support of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), DOST-Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI), Kyushu Institute of Technology, and the Philippine Space Agency.

To watch the launch live, simply visit National Aeronautics and Space Administrations website. Kaela Malig/RC, GMA News

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Maya-3 and Maya-4, PHLs own CubeSats, to be launched off to International Space Station - GMA News Online

Astronauts in Space can now watch the film about how the original Lt. Uhuru recruited the first minorities and women to fly in spaceFilm also being shown to entire NASA workforce

ORLANDO, FL / ACCESSWIRE / August 27, 2021 / Stars North Films, Shout! Studios and Concourse Media are proud to announce that the feature documentary Woman in Motion has been uploaded to the International Space Station for the astronauts to watch at their leisure.

Additionally, the film is being shown to the NASA workforce as NASA marks Women's Equality Day. NASA employees and contractors will have opportunities now through September 6 to watch the film. Showing a film to the entire NASA workforce has not been done since Hidden Figures in 2017. Not only is NASA celebrating Women's Equality Day but also its own research mathematician Katherine Johnson who is the inspiration for Hidden Figures who was born on August 26, 1918.

Directed by Todd Thompson, the film chronicles how Nichols transformed her sci-fi television stardom into a real-life science career when she embarked on a campaign to bring diversity to NASA in 1977. Nichols formed the company Women In Motion, Inc. and recruited more than 8,000 African American, Asian and Latino women and men for the agency. Nichols and her program continue to influence the younger generation of astronauts as well, including Mae Jemison, the first female African American astronaut in space. Despite an uphill battle against a bureaucracy that was initially hesitant to let her get involved, Nichols persevered and is credited by NASA for turning it into one of the most diverse independent agencies in the United States Federal Government.

Thompson said, "It is an honor for Woman in Motion to be in the company of films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Apollo 13 and Hidden Figures on the Space Station, where the diversity onboard is a true reflection of Nichelle Nichols's incredible efforts."

Producer Tim Franta said, "I hope the Space Station crew has a movie night and watches the film together. It is only fitting that a film about astronauts be watched by astronauts in space."

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Matthew Shreder, CEO at Concourse Media, said, "Having this film on the ISS and shown to everyone at NASA is a dream-come-true for everyone involved. We are all honored and humbled to be included among the library of films made available to the astronauts and personnel who share Nichelle's vision of equality for all."

"I cannot think of a more appropriate film to share with the amazing crew of the International Space Station," said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is also executive producer of the film. "Nichelle Nichols took equality to new heights and her message that Space is for everyone!' continues to inspire and motivate new generations."

Crump linked the recruitment program Nichelle Nichols worked on in 1977 to NASA's most recent effort: "In the spirit on Nichelle's groundbreaking work, it is encouraging that NASA announced its new 'Mission Equity' program to further expand diversity and equal opportunity for all Americans." More information on the program can be found here.

Woman in Motion is available on demand and digital and is streaming on Paramount+.

Click here to download the Electronic Media Kit.

About Stars North Films

Stars North Films is an award-winning, independent, motion picture production company based in Orlando, Florida. The company actively pursues the development and production of original digital content and short and feature-length films, leveraging state legislative incentives that help support growth in the local economy and generate a continuous flow of work for cast and crew. Follow Stars North on Facebook and Twitter.

About Shout! Studios

Shout! Studios is the filmed entertainment production and distribution arm of Shout! Factory, specializing in all aspects of distribution, including theatrical, VOD, digital and broadcast. Reflecting Shout! Factory's ongoing commitment to innovation and excellence, Shout! Studios champions and supports like-minded filmmakers and creators at the forefront of pop culture, driving creative expression and diversity in independent storytelling. Shout! Studios finances, produces, acquires and distributes an eclectic slate of movies, award-winning animated features, specialty films and series from rising and established talent, filmmakers and producers.

About Concourse Media

Concourse Media is a content agency that offers entertainment and technology services for clients and brands. It facilitates the packaging, financing and licensing of content across all forms of distribution. More than ever, it continues its mission of being a filmmaker-focused agency that supports the creative process from a foundational level. Concourse was formed as a vehicle for content makers to thrive in, and its model centers on bringing a unique and diverse set of voices to the forefront of today's entertainment marketplace. Our leadership has been involved in the distribution of more than 40 independent films over the past decade. For more information on Concourse, please visit the company website at http://www.concourse-media.com.

Media Contact:Jennifer Bisbee, APRjennifer@bisbeeandco.com407-257-4667

SOURCE: Stars North

View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/661710/Woman-in-Motion-Documentary-Honoring-Star-Treks-Nichelle-Nichols-Boldly-Goes-to-the-International-Space-Station

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"Woman in Motion" Documentary Honoring Star Treks Nichelle Nichols Boldly Goes to the International Space Station - Yahoo Finance

Hong Kong people are eagerly looking forward to a real-time dialogue with three mainland astronauts on Chinas space station in early September.

The three astronauts, Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo, on board of the Shenzhou-12 spaceship were sent into space and entered the space station core module Tianhe on June 17 and have since carried out a number of tasks as planned.

In recent days, the dialogue with the astronauts has become a hot topic in Hong Kong. Many people are curious about the daily life of the three astronauts and are concerned about their physical and mental conditions.

It is reported that during a conversation scheduled on Sept. 3, the astronauts will give a virtual tour of the core module and answer questions collected in advance.

Since Monday, people who are interested in taking part can submit their questions on the Hong Kong STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) Education Alliances website, with some asking very professional questions.

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Hong Kong people looking forward to dialogue with astronauts on space station - Macau Business

The author (left) tasted three French dishes specially designed for astronauts on the International Space Station. Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

Astronaut food is often dry, slimy, or just plain disappointing. But French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who launched aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship in April, wanted gourmet French dishes to share with his crewmates.

So three French dishes launched to the International Space Station with Pesquet and his crew: beef bourguignon, einkorn risotto, and crpe Suzette. All are packaged in sterilized, vacuum-sealed aluminum pouches.

I tasted the three dishes, and found them surprisingly palatable. All the food had strong flavors, especially the wine-heavy bourguignon and the bright-orange crpe. In space, astronauts' sense of smell is inhibited, which makes it harder to taste food.

The einkorn provided a little crunch - which astronauts often miss - but otherwise the food's texture was mushy or chewy, and there wasn't much color. These are the tradeoffs for making space-ready food that can sit at room temperature for two years.

Here's the full taste test, along with photos of the space food.

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Many things are difficult about spaceflight: designing software, building rocket engines, calculating trajectories, and yes, supplying astronauts with appetizing food.

"I can tell you the food isn't great in space, from what we've tasted so far," Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman who's preparing to launch aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship next month, recently told me.

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have long relied on canned food, tortillas, and rehydrated meat.

Professional astronauts tend not to bad-mouth the food that NASA scientists have spent years designing for them. But journalists and food critics on Earth don't mince words.

"Space food tends to be dry. Or else slimy. Or else just weird: different enough from the product it's trying to emulate that it serves only as a sad reminder of what it is not," Megan Garber, a staff writer at The Atlantic, wrote in 2013. She summed it up as "pretty horrendous."

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But some space food is getting better. Astronaut Thomas Pesquet launched to the ISS in April with some specially commissioned French meals in tow.

Before becoming an astronaut, Pesquet worked as a commercial pilot for Air France. As he prepared for his second spaceflight, he remembered the food he'd eaten on those planes.

So he reached out to the food provider, Gategroup, to see if they could make traditional French cuisine for space.

Pesquet wanted some signature French dishes to share with his fellow astronauts on special occasions.

So when SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship launched with its second full crew a mission called Crew-2 it carried 40 pouches of the new food. Another 160 pouches remained on Earth.

I tried those dishes myself after Gategroup sent me packets from the same batch that launched aboard Crew Dragon.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

These three pouches make up a full meal: beef bourguignon, einkorn risotto, and crpe Suzette.

Pesquet chose the dishes from among nine options because he thought they would best represent "the French terroir and gastronomy," Chef Franois Adamski told me.

Other options included lentil salad, duck with orange sauce, veal blanquette, and lemon tart. Pesquet tasted each dish in its original, fresh iteration, then in its packaged, sterilized, ready-for-space state.

"He was very happy when he ate all the dishes," Adamski said. "But he really preferred the three dishes he chose, obviously, because for him they were the most powerful and the most flavorful."

On the ISS, astronauts slip the pouches between two hot plates to warm them up. I dropped mine in hot water for about seven minutes each.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

The food is cooked before it goes into the aluminum-and-plastic pouch, then a sterilization process cooks it a second time once the pouch is sealed. So it just needs to be warmed up.

The pouches go through a sterilization machine with high temperatures and high pressure. That affects the flavor, but it makes the food safe to store at room temperature for up to two years.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

The last time I ate "space food" was during a field trip in elementary school when we had "astronaut ice cream" a dish which has never actually traveled to space. So I had no frame of reference for how this meal would taste.

First up: beef bourguignon. The beef was shredded finely and accompanied by bacon, mushrooms, and glazed onions.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

Scissors are required to open the vacuum-sealed pouches. If they had perforation or another easy-open mechanism, the food wouldn't store very well.

The beef smelled strongly of wine. Food on the ISS is required to be alcohol-free, so Adamski cooked all the alcohol off the dish, rather than skipping the wine.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

"For Americans, it doesn't seem like a big constraint," Deborah Rolland, who helped translate for Adamski, told me. But for French food, she said, "this was a very difficult thing."

Each of these recipes calls for alcohol: The beef bourguignon is cooked with red wine, the risotto with white wine, and the crpe Suzette with Grand Marinier. It's a dominant smell and flavor in all three dishes.

Being in space diminishes astronauts' sense of taste, so food has to have strong flavors.

On Earth, gravity pulls on fluids throughout your body, drawing them towards the ground. But in the microgravity of the ISS, those fluids flow freely. That means astronauts' sinuses and nasal cavities get filled with fluid, similar to when you have a cold. Their stuffy noses tend to dull a lot of smells and, therefore, flavors.

"Your sinuses are pounding and you can't really taste your food. It's like that the whole time," astronaut Chris Hadfield told Slate.

As a result, the beef bourguignon tasted so salty that it made me thirsty. The beef was nice and chewy, though - not the mush I'd feared.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

There were visible chunks of onion and mushroom. I did wish for carrots to add some texture.

I'm no culinary expert, but overall I thought it was pretty tasty, especially if you account for having a dulled sense of taste in space.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

Otherwise, anyone eating this on Earth should prepare to drink lots of water and maybe have bread on the side.

Next dish: risotto with Prigord black truffle. Traditional risotto is made with arborio rice, but Adamski used a firm wheat grain called einkorn.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

Of the three dishes, Adamski is most proud of this one. The sauce had to be thick, he said, to survive sterilization and storage. Compared to the bourguignon, this creamy risotto had a mellow flavor. The buttery truffle stood out.

Astronauts have to eat a lot of mushy food. Einkorn adds a little crunch and keeps the risotto from turning to goop.

"We wanted to have different kinds of textures," Marjolaine LeGuellec, the engineer behind the Gategroup meal, told me. "So the chef used natural ingredients that have crunchiness and keep crunchiness even with the sterilization process, like einkorn."

Many crunchy foods, like chips, can't go to the ISS because they create too many crumbs. Floating crumbs can get lodged in computers and equipment.

Astronauts eat the food straight out of the packet, but I emptied them onto a plate. I added a quarter for scale.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

The portion sizes were more on the European side.

Traditional toppings for dishes like these, such as parsley or other fresh herbs, are very rare in space. Astronauts don't get many fresh greens.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

A recent experiment on the ISS, however, grew vegetables that the astronauts ate as a side dish: "Amara" mustard and "extra dwarf" pak choi.

"Delicious, plus the texture or crunch," NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins wrote in experiment notes after tasting the mustard plant.

Finally, it's dessert time. The crpe Suzette with orange zest was flambed in Grand Marinier. It was very orange-y.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

The orange smell hit me as soon as I cut the pouch open. It was the dominant flavor, too.

The crpe did not stay intact when I scooped it onto my plate, though to be fair, it wasn't designed to be eaten this way.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

This was nothing like crpes I've had before. It had a mealy texture. I have a sweet tooth, though, so that didn't bother me much. Any crpe left in liquid for months would probably end up with this texture, no matter how sterilized it was.

"You never really get to perfection," Adamski said.

"We went as far as we thought we could to be representative of the reality of that dish as consumed in a restaurant," Adamski added.

"Whatever we do, we always have the constraint of the sterilization," LeGuellec said.

Overall, though, the space food impressed me.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

It was better than some frozen dinners I've had here on Earth.

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I tried the French space food that launched with SpaceX's latest astronaut crew, and it was better than I expected - Yahoo News

So. You just test-fired the experimental engine on your brand new orbiting space station and, well it kinda blew up the moon. But somehow that's not even the worst bit of news you'll get today. In colony sim Ixion, you're managing a space station and its crew as things quickly go from bad to worse to utterly unthinkable.

I recently got to see the first half-hour or so of Ixion, which serves as a tutorial and sets the stage for the calamity that will change everything. You're the administrator of the space station Tiqqun (pronounced "tycoon") orbiting Earth, charged with getting things up and running: managing the power supply, maintaining the hull integrity, setting up supply lines, and building supplemental structures like crew quarters and science labs. It's like a little city orbiting Earth, and you're the mayor, but you won't be orbiting much longer.

You'll also build a data listening service, which will eavesdrop on your crew so you can measure their morale, which sounds pretty draconian but not too far-fetched in the age of megacorporations that can afford their own space stations. The crew will also directly communicate with you to let you know what they need, such as more housing, infirmaries to deal with their workplace injuries, and other requests. Keeping their trust in you is paramount to success, and just as important as keeping the station's hull in one piece.

And you'll construct the massive Vohle Engine, meant to transport the station to distant solar systems so humankind can find a new home, now that the Earth has been rendered nearly uninhabitable due to pollution, global warming, and a shortage of resources. But when that engine is ignited for the first time, something goes horribly wrong and it shatters the Moon, turning your mission from an exploratory venture into humanity's last hope of survival. It's a good, sci-fi premise, one we've seen in books like Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora.

The new Ixion teaser video you can see above gives us a closer (if sadly brief) look at the inside of the space station we'll be managing. You can see some of the buildings you'll get to place in the station, and enjoy the detailed animation of each. There are rows of green algae farms you'll need to make food for your crew, shuttle bays for the science and cargo ships you'll be able to deploy, and the supply lines you'll have to lay down in the cramped interior. You begin the game with only one sector of the station available to build in, but as you progress you'll unlock new sectors that will give you more room to expand. Plus, you're gonna have to fix that pesky Vohle Engine to make sure you don't shatter any more moons when you move between different solar systems.

As we saw when Ixion was announced earlier this year at the PC Gaming Show, there are some pretty strong Frostpunk vibes happening here. Though you're in space instead of on Earth, you still represent the last hope of humanity as you search the galaxy for a new habitable planet. You'll constantly contend with shortages of resources, having to scour locations around the solar systems you visit to salvage parts, discover new technology, and even add to your crew by finding cryogenic pods with frozen astronauts inside. If your station's crew get unhappy enough with your decisions, they'll go on strike, and if their trust in you doesn't improve they'll actually remove you from power, ending your game, similar to how you're thrown out on the tundra in Frostpunk if your citizens lose too much morale.

Another element that reminds me of Frostpunk: the act of charging up your interstellar engine to jump to new star systems will draw so much power from your ship that you'll essentially be in blackout mode for several minutes, and you'll have to scramble to keep everything running on limited power until the engine fires. It makes me think of the harsh blizzards that would periodically sweep through your city in Frostpunk, those tense times where you held your breath as you tried to survive adverse conditions through a period where new resources couldn't be gathered.

Oh, and by the way: the destruction of the moon isn't even the extent of the catastrophe. When your engine fired that first time, your space station, rather than traveling through space, actually moved through time. You're still orbiting the wrecked moon, but you're now several decades in the future. That is a serious engine problem! What happened on Earth and in the rest of the solar system in all those decades you missed? And what went wrong with the Vohle Engine in the first place? In Ixion, uncovering the mystery of the catastrophe and searching for answers is just the beginning.

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The moon blowing up isn't the worst thing that happens in space station sim Ixion - PC Gamer

Its bright. Its noisy. Its nerve-wracking. But the launch of two satellites Saturday night is just the latest in a long series of countdowns needed to get Australia back in the space race.

At 5.37 pm AEST Saturday, the Binar-1 and CUAVA-1 CubeSats are set to be piggy-backed aboard a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station.

Both are technology demonstrators, and both are just steps towards far more ambitious projects.

Iver Cairns, professor of physics at the University of Sydney, says the launch is a real turning point for Australias embryonic space project. And its one that can be disastrous: the rocket can explode, or be put in the wrong orbit.

But its ultimately just another stepping stone.

First, the projects had to get off the drawing board. Then, the CubeSats had to be built and successfully tested.

Then, theres this 10 minutes of terror as you watch the launch, says Cairns, who was involved in building CUAVA-1.

More tense times will quickly follow.

They have to be deployed from the space station; they have to activate; they have to contact the Adelaide-based Responsive Space Operations Centre; and finally their payloads have to work.

Theres a lot of holding breath moments to come, he says.

Read more: space news Return to the Moon will have to wait

Binar-1 is a tiny 10cm cube. Its entirely Australian designed and built, and its intended to enable satellites to know where they are even when skimming close to the Moons surface.

CUAVA-1 is three times bigger. Also designed and built in Australia, its a collaboration between several Australian universities, corporations and government labs. Its carrying four Australian experiments and two technology demonstrators.

Both CubeSats are building blocks for much bigger and better things.

Director of Curtin Universitys Space Science and Technology Centre, Phil Bland, led the team of students who assembled Binar-1. Its mission is to test cameras needed to capture starfields, which future CubeSats can use for navigation.

The idea is that they will go into very low lunar orbit, or will have lunar orbits that get to a very low periapsis around the moon, Bland says.

Binar-1 has been built with consumer off-the-shelf components (remember, your average smartphone is far more computationally powerful than anything the Apollo 11 lunar lander had). It also exploits lessons learnt from assembling space observatories in the outback to ensure resilience and functionality.

Cairns says his CUAVA-1 tested every aspect of Australias emerging space industry, from precision assembly to regulatory requirements.

But not every launch was successful.

When we built and tested the CubeSat the first time, it turned out its dimensions were very, very slightly wrong. A tiny bit of warping, less than the width of a human hair, was enough to prevent it from fitting in the deployment system. So we missed the launch.

The CubeSat was rebuilt even as unexpected launch certification issues arose around its use of amateur-band radio frequencies.

Space is getting much easier, Cairns says. But its still very hard.

CUAVA-1 will demonstrate the spaceworthiness of several ideas. One is piggy-backing power cabling for transferring data. Its similar to using a houses electric wiring as internet cabling.

It saves weight. It saves volume. It reduces the number of vulnerable connections that can fail, he says. On the scale of a CubeSat, thats a sizeable improvement.

Then theres a 1cm aperture telescopic camera. This will attempt to prove technology that will sift through the complex tangle of light from binary stars for traces of planets.

CUAVA-2 is waiting to incorporate the lessons of its older sibling.

Its also got some novel instruments and novel technology, Cairns says. But this one will be ready to share useful data with the community.

That includes hyperspectral images of coastal marine environments, and using GPS signal reflections off the open ocean to infer sea states and winds. A lot of time and effort goes into a CubeSat, he says. But not so much that you cant afford to take risks.

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Australian-made satellites blast off to the ISS - Cosmos Magazine