Category Archives: Space Station

Space Race! Richard Branson will beat Jeff Bezos to outer space by nine days

With the space race heating up, with Sir Richard Branson making a major announcement.

Buzz60, Buzz60

If you're watching a launch into space, the chances are great you're watching a Boilermaker reach for the stars.

Purdue University boasts the largest number of graduates who have traveled into space, including the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong; Gene Cernan, the most recent to walk on the moon;and Beth Moses, the first female commercial astronaut and set to fly aboard billionaire Richard Branson's flight Sunday, July 11.

Virgin Galactic: Two Purdue graduates to launch with Branson on Sunday

According to Purdue, the celebrated astronauts to wear the "Old Gold and Black" include:

Nearly a third of all U.S. spaceflights, according to the university,have included a Purdue graduate. Tenmissions have included multiple Purdue grads.

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Purdue's 'Cradle of Astronauts': the 25 Boilermakers who have traveled into space - Journal & Courier

AN eagle-eyed space-watcher has spotted at least ten small black objects hovering right below the International Space Station.

The conspiracy theorist believes the NASA live feed captured the UFOs forming up in a circle above the Southern Atlantic Ocean.

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Footage grabbed from the Nasa live stream from the International Space Station shows the orb-like objects moving past the camera.

UFO hunter "Mr MBB333" shared a screenshot taken by the space watcher captured on Saturday, July 3.

He posted the shocking discovery on YouTube, saying: "This is a screen grab from the International Space Station above the South Atlantic, at around 8.30am."

"Ten unknown objects travelling with the space station above the planet Earth."

The video prompted UFO fans to dash to the ISS live feed before sharing their thoughts on the objects.

One said: "I just checked the ISS cameras and those little specks are still there."

Another wrote: "What it looks like to me is there's a whole bunch of Black Knight probes."

Dismissed as a conspiracy theory for decades, ex-US defence officials, sitting politicians, and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have all acknowledged there is something unusual going on in our skies.

Speculation among UFO fans has been running rife as lawmakers and officials have hinted at potentially significant information compiled in the classified section of Pentagon's landmark report on alien activity.

US officials released the highly anticipated public document after giving a secret briefing to Congress two weeks ago but now everyone is asking, what is in the full version of the dossier?

It was commissioned after the Pentagon took the extraordinary step of confirmed a trio of stunning videos showing encounters with pilots - admitting they could not explain the phenomena.

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Richard Dolan, an American historian who has researched the topic for 25 years, claims one of his sources provided him with details apparently in the section that was briefed to certain US Congressmen and US Senators.

He alleged the classified portion was 70 pages long and included information about advanced and potentially alien propulsion systems and experimental craft using the tech that are being tested at Area 51.

However, he made clear the information was "unconfirmed".

Meanwhile, UFO researcher and professor Bob McGwier claimed 14 videos were shown in the classified briefing describing it as like a "science fiction movie".

He claimed officials redacted everything they could from the report which saw the public version slashed to just nine pages.

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Mystery as fleet of 10 UFOs spotted hovering near International Space Station on NASA live stream... - The Sun

When Lisa Rich held a call with investors in March to raise money for Aurvandil Acquisition, a company that buys start-ups focused on space technology, her goal was to bring in several million dollars.

Ms. Rich, a member of Aurvandils board, almost reached her goal within an hour.

That just doesnt happen, she said, laughing.

Richard Branson is scheduled to fly to space on Sunday, on a ship built by his company Virgin Galactic. Jeff Bezos, who stepped down as Amazons chief executive on Monday, is set to take a spaceflight about a week later, in a spacecraft built by his company Blue Origin. And Elon Musks SpaceX company has a deal with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to land Americans on the moon. But moguls are far from the only people with their eyes to the skies.

Investors are putting more money than ever into space technology. Space start-ups raised over $7 billion in 2020, double the amount from just two years earlier, according to the space analytics firm BryceTech. That trend is continuing this year, said Carissa Christensen, BryceTechs chief executive.

The largest deals are going to companies that launch rockets into space, like SpaceX and Relativity Space, which announced $650 million in new money last month, a day after Mr. Bezos declared that he would fly to space.

But start-ups in every sector of the space industry including launch and satellite communications, human life support, supply chains and energy have investors attention. Astranis, a satellite internet company, closed a $280 million deal in April. Axiom Space, which aims to build the first commercial space station, raised $130 million in February.

Ive never seen a market like this, ever, said Gabe Dominocielo, a co-founder of Umbra, a start-up that develops satellites designed to take pictures regardless of weather or light conditions. Since last year, the amount of phone calls Ive received as a start-up, typically, the start-up is typically making a phone call to an investor. Now its completely the reverse.

The boom, many executives, analysts and investors say, is fueled partly by advancements that have made it affordable for private companies not just nations to develop space technology and launch products into space.

Thanks to technology developed for mobile phones, for example, start-ups like Planet can afford to build and deploy satellites that can image the entire Earth every day. And analytical abilities enabled by machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud computing have increased the demand for the data those satellites produce.

You can do a lot more with a smaller satellite and launch many more of them, said Mike Safyan, a vice president at Planet, which ends up enabling new types of missions that you couldnt do if youre just building one satellite the size of a school bus that has very expensive space-specific technology.

Also, satellite companies can now pay to have their technology hitch a ride on a rocket, greatly lowering their economic barriers. For example, if a rocket has a 500-kilogram capacity and the primary payload is 300 kilograms, another company can use 200 kilograms.

Astra, a start-up founded in 2016, wants to make it even easier to go to space by offering smaller, more frequent launches positioning itself as a building block of the space industry similar to cloud computings role in enabling web start-ups. The company is competing in the small launch market with other and more established start-ups like Rocket Lab, but hopes to stand out by aiming for even smaller and cheaper launches. Astra has scheduled its first launch with a payload for this summer and has 50 launches under contract, including for Planet and NASA.

Astra is there filling in this gap in the market where you have hundreds of these companies, they all have new technologies theyre developing, and you dont want to wait until next year when SpaceX can get you there, said Chris Kemp, Astras chief executive. Even if its free, even if SpaceX paid me money to wait a year, the value of being able to get to space next month is incredibly valuable to a start-up thats burning millions of dollars a month.

The ability to reuse something and make it consistent and reliable is transformative in the space industry, said Ms. Rich, who is also a founder of Hemisphere Ventures, which has invested in space companies since 2014, and a founder and the chief operating officer of Xplore, a company designing orbital missions.

The latest wave of deals has also been driven in part by a spate of special purpose acquisition companies like Ms. Richs Aurvandil. The sole purpose of these publicly traded shell companies, known as SPACS, is to buy one or more private companies. They have been one of the financial worlds hottest trends over the past year.

From the start-ups perspective, merging with a SPAC is an efficient way to raise large sums at an earlier stage. It also changes the calculus for investors.

Some investors shied from space start-ups in the past because the technology often takes much longer than software, like a social media service or an app, to develop and generate revenue.

If youre in a software company and you deploy an app and it doesnt work, you just spin up a new app. That failure maybe cost a month or two months of time, Mr. Dominocielo of Umbra said. If you have a satellite, youre spending just millions of dollars, and if that satellite fails, youve lost years.

But SPACs allow companies to go public earlier than a traditional initial public offering, giving investors an opportunity to cash out much earlier. The value of the public company is often based in part on growth projections rather than actual revenue.

Ten companies in the space industry have announced plans for a SPAC merger, including seven in 2021. Planet and Astra are among the seven. On Wednesday, Planet announced a merger with dMY Technology Group IV that is expected to raise $434 million. The merger with Holicity will infuse Astra with about $489 million in cash, allowing it to expand fast enough to keep up with what Mr. Kemp calls absolutely insatiable demand.

When you get to the point where you need half a billion dollars of capital to build a rocket factory, then you have to go public because youre beyond the venture stage of financing, he said. Thats where the SPACs really play well.

Astra began the merger process in December and went public on Nasdaq last week.

In total, $3.9 billion has been raised through the nine SPAC deals, and the companies have a combined enterprise value of $20 billion, according to Ms. Christensen of BryceTech.

Investors, founders and analysts expect the space industry to continue to expand rapidly. Morgan Stanley estimated that space will be a $1 trillion industry by 2040, up from $350 billion in 2020.

Ms. Christensen said increased government contracts, both for research missions like NASAs Artemis moon program and for military and national defense purposes like the Space Force, are expected to continue to drive industry development. Others see commercial space travel as the railroad that will catalyze mass access to the final frontier.

Everyones sort of waiting to see if Elon can pull off Starship, said Rick Tumlinson, a founding partner of SpaceFund, a venture firm. And then therell be a lag time when he actually starts flying, when people get businesses and the stuff they want to fly together and the funding, so therell be this bump that occurs in, I would say, three years.

Its like the week before the internet for us, he said.

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Advancements in Space Technology Drive Investor Interest - The New York Times

An astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station gave a special shout out to Cork last night - with a stunning pic of Leeside taken from outer space.

Shane Kimbrough is one of the crew aboard the ISS, orbiting Earth at 17,13o mph (there's no speed cameras in space).

And the US NASA Astronaut, US Army Colonel and AH-64 Apache pilot has been taking some amazing pictures to post to social media, including a lovely one of Cork city and harbour.

Posting to Twitter, Shane showed he knows Cork and knows his history, saying; "Great memories in the lovely city of Cork, Ireland!"

"Blackrock Castle Observatory (near the center of the photo) was first built as a fort in 1582, with the purpose of discouraging pirates & invaders along the River Lee & Lough Mahon."

And the crew at Blackrock Castle were straight back to the starman, saying; "Thanks for sharing Shane! We hope you're keeping well and here's hoping we get to welcome you back to Ireland's real capital in the not too distant future!".

Shane is one of seven astronauts and cosmonauts currently aboard the ISS, along with Pyotr Dubrov, Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet, Akihiko Hoshide, Oleg Novitskiy and Mark Vande Hei. The ISS is permanently crewed with a range of scientists and specialists, carrying out cutting-edge research into everything from climate change and new medicines to the knowlege that will help us reach further into space in the future.

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Astronaut shares amazing pic of Leeside from International Space Station as he waves to friends in Cork - Cork Beo

Dead Space 2 was released ten years ago. In the time since, weve seen the size and ambition of in-game setpieces balloon. Games like God of War place huge importance on their cinematic camera techniques. The recently released Resident Evil 8 has some of the most technically complex scenes ever put in a horror game.

And yet. Even a decade removed from Dead Space 2, I still think it pulls off tense action sequences better than most modern games. Through a combination of clearly communicated motivations, well-considered pacing, and staggering aesthetic design, Dead Space 2s setpieces continue to stand tall with the best of the medium.

This essay on Dead Space 2 was written as a companion piece to the video above, also created by Jacob Geller.

Horror media often follows a predictable pattern. The first entry in a series will tend to have a relatively small scale, focusing on an intimate scenario and only a few characters. If that first entry succeeds, the franchise comes back with a sequel that has a larger scope, wider target audience, and higher budget. This cycle repeats until later entries in the series barely resemble the first. This happened with Alien. It happened with Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Saw. Resident Evil has been around long enough to experience and reset this pattern several times. And its easy to identify this pattern within the Dead Space series.

For a game in which you dismember monsters with a mining tool, the original Dead Space is surprisingly restrained. Its atmosphere comes from quietly wandering the creaking halls of an abandoned spaceship as much as gruesome combat. However, by Dead Space 3, much of that subtlety was replaced with co-op, microtransactions, and boss fights against giant drills. Its easy to paint the series as one that let commercial success get in the way of its minimalist roots.

But Dead Space 2 proved that it could straddle the restraint of the first entry and the excess of the third. It could add bombast while maintaining a clear connection to the horror its built on. And nowhere is this more clear than in the games standout setpiece: the HALO jump.

Dead Space 2 takes place across a massive space station called The Sprawl, essentially a donut-shaped city in space. In the middle of the game, series protagonist Isaac Clarke is fixing something on one side of The Sprawl when he gets a panicked call from his friends, stationed on the opposite side. This is a classic Dead Space move a straightforward engineering activity suddenly becomes stressful thanks to some external pressure. In the first game, Isaac likely would have finished the repair, taken a train across the station, and arrived to find his friends already dead. But, thanks to the expanded scope of the second game, we get a sequence thats simultaneously more tense and more explosive.

After receiving the distress call, Isaac realizes that the only way hes going to make it across the space station in time is a HALO jump (thats an acronym for High Altitude, Low Opening basically a risky form of skydiving in-atmosphere). He rushes to a control room, screams to his friends that they just need to hold on, throws himself into an ejector seat, and in one beautiful camera motion shoots himself into space.

In space, no one can hear you rocketing across the void in a desperate attempt to save the people you care about from imminent dismemberment at least, not at first. In a brilliant subversion of all the tension that led up to this point, the first few seconds of Isaacs HALO jump are completely silent. The sound of the ejector seats rockets disappear, and were left with the quiet horror of the vacuum of space. Its a moment that takes my breath away.

Then, agonizingly slowly, the scene adds noise back in. First come the bass-y rumblings of Isaacs rocket thrusters, then the deep woosh-ings of objects flying past you. Neither of these really register as noise; theyre more like vibrations picked up through a spacesuit. After a few more seconds, Isaacs jagged breathing cuts through the void, getting louder and louder until finally, just before landing, an entire screeching horror orchestra breaks out of the silence. Its a technical tour de force, a demonstration of the power of auditory restraint that lasts through all 45 seconds of the scene.

The minimalism of the soundscape serves to further emphasize the astounding visuals on display. Theres no restraint here, only spectacle. As soon as the scene starts, were treated to a perspective weve not yet seen in the game: a view of all of The Sprawl, laid out in front of us. At first, we can barely identify the massive city blocks set into the space station. As Isaac draws closer, those city blocks fragment into individual buildings, enormous spires and apartments drawn in crisp detail.

Equally detailed are the objects were dodging past on our way to the other side. Instead of featureless space junk or nondescript asteroids, Dead Space 2 fills its void with intimately textured objects. We fly past a decrepit ship with a visible airlock and the paint rusting off its hull. We narrowly avoid an entire hallway, broken away in a complete piece, still full of broken light fixtures. We dodge, not around, but through a colossal chunk of infrastructure, so big that it blocks out our entire view for a few seconds.

Although these are simple obstacles when viewed from a strictly gameplay standpoint, their detail lends the scene a surprising credibility. It doesnt feel like game designers filled the space between two points with junk because players needed something to do. Instead, this level of detail implies that any other point in space around The Sprawl would have equally unique detritus. As absurd a premise as an outer space HALO jump is on paper, Dead Space 2 uses it to deepen the character of its world.

Its not hard to imagine a similar sequence in an Uncharted title. The music swells, Nathan Drake quips, the player gets last-second help from an unexpected ally. But perhaps most importantly of all, this setpiece doesnt betray the foundation of horror the Dead Space series is built on. While not scary in a traditional sense, the HALO jump is achingly tense. The game makes us understand the desperation of this moment; Isaac has to make this jump, and if he messes up, his friends are probably going to die. As the sparse sound design escalates in its intensity and the obstacles grow more complex and harder to avoid, I start to sweat. Every time I have to dodge through the massive chunk of infrastructure, I grit my teeth.

Rumors continue to swirl around a return to Dead Space in one way or another. EA may be reviving the series, and some of the original games lead developers are working on a new IP with a familiar style. I am excited for this generations spin on the franchise, but I hope that we dont let Dead Space 2 drift from our collective memories. Because, despite all the technical advances of the past ten years, Ive yet to find a title that manages to more effectively balance stress and spectacle, horror, and awe.

Excerpt from:
Why the HALO jump scene in Dead Space 2 works so well - Polygon

SpaceX Cargo Dragon Makes Weather-Delayed ISS Departure | Aviation Week Network

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Credit: NASA

HOUSTONSpaceXs 22nd Dragon resupply mission spacecraft is headed for a late July 9 splashdown and recovery off Floridas Gulf Coast, following a weather-delayed departure from the International Space Stations (ISS) U.S. segment with a 5,300-lb. return payload of science experiments, technology...

SpaceX Cargo Dragon Makes Weather-Delayed ISS Departure is published in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) Market Briefing and is included with your AWIN membership.

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SpaceX Cargo Dragon Makes Weather-Delayed ISS Departure - Aviation Week

The Russian nuclear-powered tug Zeus, which is equipped with a megawatt-class electric propulsion system, can be used to disable control systems of enemy spacecraft with an electromagnetic impulse and shoot laser beams, according to a paper of the Arsenal design bureau, part of Russias Roscosmos.

Russia Will Begin Hunting For Extraterrestrial Life With Zeus Nuclear-Powered Tug Roscosmos

In May, the Keldysh Research Center released a paper showing that Zeus can be used in anti-aircraft defense, detecting air targets from the orbit and relaying information to anti-aircraft systems.

In 2018-2019, the Arsenal design bureau conducted the Yadro [Core] research project that reviewed options for using a spacecraft with a megawatt-class nuclear power propulsion system to perform the following tasks probing the Earth surface and the near-Earth air space from a distance; electromagnetic interference with electronic components of control, reconnaissance, communication and navigation systems; directed-energy laser emission, the Arsenal paper read.

The Zeus nuclear-powered space tug is designed for deep space flights from one orbit to another. It has been in development since 2010. The spacecrafts preliminary design is expected to be finished by July 2024 and will cost 4.2 billion rubles.

Can China Beat Russia & France To Become Worlds Second-Largest Exporter Of Fighter Jets Behind The US?

Earlier, the Russian Keldysh Research Center said that it plans to test a drip refrigerator-emitter for the nuclear-powered tug on board the International Space Station (ISS), new data on the state procurement website shows.

The new tests on board the ISS will follow the unsuccessful drip refrigerator-emitter experiment carried out in 2014, when an abrupt failure of some technological components did not, nonetheless, prevent scientists from collecting valuable data.

Why Chinese Stealth Fighter Jets Have No Buyers In Sight Unlike The US F-35 & Russian Su-57 Jets?

The Zeus nuclear-powered space tug designed for deep space flights from one orbit to another has been in development since 2010 in Russia. The nuclear-propelled space tug is designed to fly to the moon and planets of the solar system to search for extraterrestrial life. All the scientific and research and development works on the project are called Nuklon.

A prototype of Zeus was first exhibited at the International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS-2019. A 3D animation of its deployment in orbit was shown at the International Military-Technical Forum ARMY-2020.

The preliminary design of Zeus is expected to be finished by July 2024 and will cost 4.2 billion rubles ($57.3 million). The tug is expected to be sent into space for test flights in 2030.

Watch: The Ultimate Dogfight Between US & Russian Fighter Jets Over A Top-Secret Air Base In Nevada

30 Times Faster Than Speed Of Sound: Is China Really Winning The Hypersonic Race With Its JF-22 Wind Tunnel?

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Russia Says Its Nuclear-Powered Space Tug Can Detect, Disable & Shoot-Down Enemy Spacecraft From The Orbit - EurAsian Times

The International Space Station is scheduled to get another power boost today (June 25), and you can watch the solar array deployment live here.

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut from the European Space Agency, will exit the Quest airlock around 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), as long as the last-minute preparations complete on schedule. Starting at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 GMT), you can watch their activities live here in the window above, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly via the agency's website.

This will be the third spacewalk for the two Expedition 65 astronauts in the last two weeks. On June 16, Pesquet and Kimbrough fought through technical issues and problems with the equipment to partially install one of the arrays. Then they completed the first array unfurling on Sunday (June 20).

Pesquet, spacewalking for the fifth time, will wear the spacesuit with red stripes on it to designate him as lead spacewalker, known as extravehicular crewmember 1 (EV1). Kimbrough, wearing a plain white spacesuit as EV2, will be on his ninth spacewalk, according to NASA.

The spacewalkers will also be on their fifth extravehicular activity together, following the two Expedition 65 spacewalks earlier this month and another two excursions duringExpedition 50, in 2017.

Related: Spacewalking astronauts prepare International Space Station for new solar arrays

In an ISS blog post Thursday (June 24), NASA said the spacewalk will "continue new roll-out solar array installation work", including installing a second ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the stations P6 truss structure.

The iROSAs are gradually being deployed in front of the eight original solar arrays that were placed on the ISS between 2000 and 2009. All of the older arrays have exceeded their 15-year design life and are showing signs of degraded power production in orbit.

These power upgrades are part of a multi-year effort to increase science production on the station, as the ISS agreement currently extends to 2024 and several partners hope to make it to 2028 or even later.

Once the various iROSAs are installed, electricity supply on the space station will be boosted by 20% to 30%. Earlier this year, NASA tackled power upgrades from another angle, as it wrapped up a more than four-year effort to put in newer and more efficient batteries on the ISS.

As with the other spacewalks earlier this month, Pesquet and Kimbrough will be supported by NASA Expedition 65 astronauts Megan McArthur and Mark Vande Hei, from inside the ISS. NASA Mission Control will support the crew from the ground, with a socially distanced team in Houston.

NASA says the spacewalk will be the 241st in support of station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Watch spacewalking astronauts add a new solar array to International Space Station today - Space.com

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Space Station Flyover early Saturday - FOX Carolina

Parts of southeastern Wisconsin remain in an extreme drought. Conditions can be a concern for farming. But the University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to solve the problem with an out-of-this-world experiment. Cotton seeds traveled to the International Space Station earlier this month for an experiment called "Targeting Improved Cotton Through Orbital Cultivation," or "tic toc" for short."The question we are asking is 'How does gravity make cotton roots grow?' and the experiment is to remove gravity and the only place you'll get to do that is on the space station," Dr. Simon Gilroy said.The main goal is to find a way to produce cotton using less water to help the environment."Cotton has a big environmental footprint, the best way to put that in context is to grow enough cotton to make a single t-shirt is somewhere around 700 gallons of irrigation water," Gilroy said.The findings could be beneficial for Wisconsin crops in the future."We are focused on cotton at the moment though the traits how deep the roots get, how big the volume they explore those are important for all crops," Gilroy said.Scientists are also looking at the plant's genetics and its drought intolerance."In the future, of course we are hoping to answer those same kinds of questions with space flight data on things like Wisconsin crops like corn and soybean," Gilroy said.The plants are expected to make it back July 7 to the Kennedy Space Station where they will continue to study them.

Parts of southeastern Wisconsin remain in an extreme drought.

Conditions can be a concern for farming.

But the University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to solve the problem with an out-of-this-world experiment.

Cotton seeds traveled to the International Space Station earlier this month for an experiment called "Targeting Improved Cotton Through Orbital Cultivation," or "tic toc" for short.

"The question we are asking is 'How does gravity make cotton roots grow?' and the experiment is to remove gravity and the only place you'll get to do that is on the space station," Dr. Simon Gilroy said.

The main goal is to find a way to produce cotton using less water to help the environment.

"Cotton has a big environmental footprint, the best way to put that in context is to grow enough cotton to make a single t-shirt is somewhere around 700 gallons of irrigation water," Gilroy said.

The findings could be beneficial for Wisconsin crops in the future.

"We are focused on cotton at the moment though the traits how deep the roots get, how big the volume they explore those are important for all crops," Gilroy said.

Scientists are also looking at the plant's genetics and its drought intolerance.

"In the future, of course we are hoping to answer those same kinds of questions with space flight data on things like Wisconsin crops like corn and soybean," Gilroy said.

The plants are expected to make it back July 7 to the Kennedy Space Station where they will continue to study them.

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Scientists send seeds to space in hopes of learning how to grow with less water - WISN Milwaukee