Category Archives: Space Station

You might want to save your pennies before you book that Walt Disney World vacation you've been longing for, as we've got an out of this world destination with a stellar view eclipsing anything available in sunny Florida.

The Gateway Foundation is ramping up their two-pronged plan to promote space tourism, a zero-gravity construction industry, and scientific research aboard a pair of orbiting superstructures, the Von Braun Rotating Space Station and The Gateway Spaceport. Both endeavors are scheduled to support scientific research and space commerce, but also function as an exotichotel for outgoing tourists.

With all the challenges and conflicts of such a momentous task ahead of them, The Gateway Foundation and partnering space construction company Orbital Assembly plan to build the first space station as early as 2025 as a vital initial step to colonizing space and other heavenly worlds.

This sleek rotating structure was partially-inspired by the visionary ideas of Dr. Wernher von Braun, the pioneering German military rocket scientist who was instrumental in the development of the behemoth Saturn V rocket and NASA's successful Apollo moon landing program.

Designed by Gateway Foundation executive team member and space station lead architect, Timothy Alatorre, the Von Braun Station is hoping to become the largest human-made structure in space and will be fully capable of accommodating up to 450 people.

This gleaming ring of technology will feature amenities ranging from restaurants, viewing lounges, and musical concerts, to bars, libraries, and sports programs, allowing passengers to take full advantage of weightlessness while on board.

"The inspiration behind it really comes from watching science fiction over the last 50 years and seeing how mankind has had this dream of starship culture," Alatorre told Space.com. "I think it started really with Star Trekand then Star Wars, and [with] this concept of large groups of people living in space and having their own commerce, their own industry, and their own culture.

"We expect the operation to begin in 2025, the full station will be built out and completed by 2027," he added. "Once the station's fully operational, our hope, our goal, and our objective is to have the station available for the average person. So, a family or an individual could save up reasonably and be able to have enough money to visit space and have that experience It would be something that would be within reach."

While this might seem like an unrealistic timeframe considering the obstacles, logistics, and inevitable delays involved with an expensive project of this magnitude, Allatore still believes it's totally possible.

What do you think of The Gateway Foundation's lofty goals and would you spring for a ticket into space when reservation lines open for its first guests?

Check out SYFY WIRE's exclusive images in the gallery below and imagine yourself comfortably floating above our Big Blue Marble with cocktail in hand!

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You could be booking an Earth-view room at the Von Braun Space Station by 2025 - SYFY WIRE

Two astronauts are gearing up for what may be the most challenging spacewalks in history.

NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency will take at least four spacewalks over the next few weeks to repair an ailing dark matter experiment outside the International Space Station. The spacewalk saga begins Friday morning (Nov. 15), when the duo will embark on the first 6.5-hour spacewalk. You can watch the spacewalk live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV.

Called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), the $2 billion experiment studies cosmic particles in space by using a huge, superconducting magnet to alter the particles' paths with its magnetic field. As the particles pass through this magnetic device, eight tiny particle detectors analyze their properties, looking for evidence of antimatter and dark matter.

Related: How the Antimatter-Hunting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Works (Infographic)

NASA launched the AMS to the International Space Station in 2011 on the space shuttle Endeavour, and the experiment was designed to have a lifetime of 10 to 18 years. However, just three years after it became operational, one of its four cooling pumps failed. The four pumps are redundant, with the AMS only using one at a time for periods of 3 to 4 months, so the experiment could continue despite the AMS being down a pump.

However, when a second pump failed just a few months later, "that was when we knew that we had a serious problem to deal with," Ken Bollweg, the AMS program manager, said in the news conference. "We knew we had to do something about it, especially since AMS was getting such compelling science," Bollweg said. "We knew we wanted to extend its life."

But AMS will be getting a lot more than just some new pumps. "It's not only replacing the pumps, it's replacing the accumulator, heat exchangers, heaters, valves that whole pump package will be attached to the outside of AMS," Bollweg said, adding that the spacewalkers will be working to connect new power and data cables as well.

This NASA graphic shows the configuration of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer's thermal control system.

(Image credit: NASA)

"It's a whole new package that's designed to extend the life [of AMS] until the end of the space station," Bollweg said. NASA is planning to end its space station operations in 2024, although Congress recently proposed an extension to 2030.

Not only will the astronauts be repairing the cooling system, but they're also going to upgrade it. "We'll actually improve the cooling significantly," Bollweg added. "As things are in space, with time they degrade [and] the optical properties change, so the cooling isn't quite as efficient. This is actually going to improve it to the point where we're expecting the cooling to be even better than it was when we first started."

Astronauts began preparing the AMS for the repair job in 2017, when NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer installed a new data cable during a spacewalk together. This cable would feed data from the AMS cooling system to engineers who were planning the experiment's complicated repair work back on Earth.

NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan (left) and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano work inside the Quest airlock to check their spacesuits and tools before beginning a series of spacewalks to repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

(Image credit: NASA)

Because the AMS experiment was not designed to be repaired by astronauts in space, Friday's spacewalk will be particularly challenging, and the astronauts will have to take at least four 6.5-hour spacewalks to get the job done. In a news conference Tuesday (Nov. 12), Tara Jochim, NASA's AMS spacewalk repair project manager, said that in terms of difficulty, the AMS spacewalks are "definitely towards the top of the list, if not on the top."

The European Space Agency called these spacewalks the "most challenging since work to repair the Hubble Space Telescope." However, one big difference between the Hubble spacewalks and these AMS spacewalks is that the Hubble Space Telescope was designed to be serviced by astronauts in orbit. When NASA built the AMS, the agency was not planning to have astronauts touch it again once it was in space and the bulky gloves that astronauts wear during spacewalks will surely add to the challenge.

"We're going to go in and actually bypass the cooling system that's on AMS. To do that you've got to cut into these small stainless steel tubes that are on AMS. That presents its own unique challenges," particularly when it comes to keeping the astronauts safe, Jochim said. "To do that you're creating sharp edges, and when you're inside of a large balloon yourself, you don't want to come up against sharp things, so we had to figure out how to safely go off and do that activity."

The upgraded thermal control pump system that the spacewalkers will affix to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is pictured just before it was shipped to the International Space Station.

(Image credit: NASA)

While this repair job will be an arduous task for the astronauts, it has also been a tremendous challenge for NASA's ground teams to plan. "We usually have a standard set of EVA [extravehicular activity] tools that we design all of our space equipment to be able to interface with," Jochim said. "Unfortunately not all those would work with this activity, so we designed about 25 new space tools that we flew on a variety of missions this year" to be able to conduct this repair, she added. The most recent batch of AMS equipment just arrived at the space station two weeks ago on a Cygnus cargo spacecraft.

After Friday's spacewalk, NASA is planning to send both Parmitano and Morgan out for a second spacewalk on Nov. 22. The third will take place around Dec. 1-2, and the date for the fourth spacewalk has yet to be determined, Kenny Todd, NASA's space station operations integration manager, said in the news conference. Depending on how smoothly these four spacewalks go, they may have to take additional spacewalks.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and onFacebook.

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Astronauts Will Take 4 of the Most Challenging Spacewalks Ever to Fix a Dark Matter Experiment - Space.com

Artist Andrew Nybergs work soon will be out of this world. Literally.

Nyberg who is originally from Mankato but now resides in Brainerd was asked to design the official patch for an upcoming mission by NASA and SpaceX to the International Space Station.

Nyberg, a graduate of South Central College, is a professional graphic artist whose work youve probably already seen if youre a fan of Mankatos downtown sculpture tour. But this latest development could launch his career to infinity and beyond.

OK, enough with the jokes. Heres our interview with Andrew.

We asked Nyberg to tell a little bit more about his work and how he was chosen to design that spacey patch.

The Free Press: Tell us how you got tapped to design this patch?

Andrew Nyberg: My uncle, Douglas Hurley, is one of the astronauts assigned to DM2 (Demonstration Mission 2) which will be the first manned mission aboard a U.S.-built craft to the International Space Station since the retirement of the Space Shuttle. He was also the pilot of the very last shuttle mission that retired the program. He is married to my aunt, Karen Nyberg, who is also a NASA astronaut and has had two missions aboard the ISS. Once on Space Shuttle Discovery in 2008 and another six-month mission during Exp. 36 and 37, which flew on the Russian Soyuz.

When Karen was going on her second mission, she commissioned me to create a patch for her mission. The patch was designed and was even printed and ready for their trip. At the last minute the commander for the mission changed. The commander has the final say in the mission patch design and went with one of his own artists. So my design got tabled. However, it wasnt before they had already printed a bunch. So I at least got a few of those created patches and Karen did fly it alongside their official patch on the ISS. There is a version of it aboard the ISS to this day.

When Doug got assigned to fly aboard the Dragon Capsule, he asked me if I would be willing to create their mission patch. Of course I accepted.

FP: Were there several drafts that had to be approved by NASA/Space X or was your original creation the one that was ultimately accepted?

AN: Yes. With most design work, we tend to go through a few different variations before the final design is accepted. They were actually very easy to work with and picked one of four different versions I had given them. From there it was fine-tuned to add all of the finer details required for the mission patch.

FP: Walk us through the design. Theres a lot going on here and it seems like every thing in it symbolizes or references something that might not be apparent to people who dont know the story.

AN: There is quite a lot, indeed. We did have a lot of stuff we needed to include on the patch and I tried my best to be as creative as possible when presenting all of the elements.

Some people may ask where the clover is hidden. SpaceX has a long tradition of including a four-leaf clover in all of their patch designs. The clover tradition began after the successful orbital launch of any privately funded and developed rocket which occurred on Sept. 28, 2008. I remind them that this is a patch for NASAs commercial crew program. SpaceX will most likely have their own mission patch as well.

FP: Do you do a lot of commission work like this?

AN: I sure do! I have had the honor of doing a lot of commissioned work for various people and businesses around the Mankato area, including some of the local colleges and schools in the area.

FP: Does something like this with high visibility give the artist any kind of boost? Will you get more work because of this?

AN: I certainly hope so! Ive already had a few inquiries about some business logos and other projects.

FP: Tell us about your other work. Didnt you have a piece in the Walking Sculpture Tour?

AN: I have done quite a few large projects while working for companies like SPX Sports in Mankato. Walking through MSU or either West or East High School and you can see many of the projects I helped with when I was a part of their team (large wall murals or over-sized banners and graphics). This was also eight years ago so many of those things may have been replaced by now. The wall graphics in the Myers Field House at MSU is one of the largest projects that comes to mind.

I have also done work for Z99 in town. I designed the wrap on their Punisher parade vehicle as well as the large white and black truck you may see at Rockin Ronnys.

Im a graphic designer by trade. But overall I just like to refer to myself as an artist. My grandfather, Ken Nyberg, is pretty well known for his larger-than-life sculptures that dot the roadside in central and northern Minnesota, many of which can be seen at NybergSculptures.com or our Facebook page by the same name.

So, following in my grandfathers footsteps, I started creating some sculptures of my own using scavenged metal objects. I have a wolf titled The Cog of the Wild on display in the Mankato art walk and can be seen on the corner of Main and Second streets. (Editors note: The Cog of the Wild was just named the Peoples Choice winner on this years tour. That means the sculpture remains in the community permanently.)

The largest of my sculptures is on display at the Chahinkapa Zoo in Wahpeton, North Dakota. It is a life-sized moose made similarly to the wolf, with random metal objects welded together over a wire frame.

FP: Is creating art your full-time job or do you have a different 9-5?

AN: I am currently working as a graphic designer for Mills Automotive Group in Brainerd. Graphic design is art.

So, yes, creating art is my full-time job.

Originally posted here:
Mankato native designed patch for upcoming NASA mission to the International Space Station - Mankato Free Press

Eleven days in space can change your perspective.

After a stay at the International Space Station, Yi So-yeon found herself grateful for the Earth.

I realized that I should be grateful for all that I have my friends, siblings, parents, teachers and colleagues as well as the wind, the sky, the stars, the moon, the mountains, the air, she wrote in an email to The Daily Herald.

Yi, 41, is the first and only Korean to fly in space. An astronaut and scientist, she flew to the International Space Station in 2008 for nine days of research. She was in space for a total of 261 hours just three hours shy of 11 days.

The former Everett Community College physics instructor will share her story as South Koreas first and still only astronaut in a To The Moon and Beyond lecture on Nov. 23 at the Stanwood High School Performing Arts Center.

In 2006, Yi was working on a Ph.D. at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology when she was selected by South Koreas space program from 36,000 applicants to train in Russia for a flight to the International Space Station.

On April 8, 2008, Yi blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko.

Yi said training for the mission itself wasnt hard. The challenge was learning to speak enough Russian in just six months in order to train for the flight.

Over the missions nine days, Yi carried out 18 experiments and medical tests for the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. Most of the tests involved how scientific phenomena changes in space.

She monitored the effects of zero gravity on fruit flies, plant seeds and her own heart, eyes and facial shape. She also observed the movement of dust storms from China to Korea.

During her stay at the International Space Station, Yi never tired of looking at the Earth. Whenever she woke up in the middle of the night, she would climb out of her sleeping bag and float over to her cabins window for another look.

Our beautiful planet, Earth, is the greatest gift from God, she said. I believe that we have an obligation to share it fairly with everyone, to preserve it to the best of our ability, and to hand it over to the next generation in as good a condition as when received.

She nearly died coming back to Earth though she didnt know it at the time.

On the return trip with American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko in the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft, the equipment and re-entry modules didnt properly separate before re-entering Earths atmosphere.

The malfunction put the spacecraft on a re-entry trajectory that subjected the crew to nearly 16Gs of force, or 16 times the force of gravity, compared to the normal Soyuz re-entry force of 4.5Gs.

The spacecraft had a rough landing in Kazakhstan, 260 miles from its target. Kazakh nomads were the first to find the wayward capsule.

We didnt know how serious it was, Yi said. We only knew it was not normal, and the computer changed the re-entry mode to ballistic re-entry. However, after getting back, during the investigation teams brief, we got to know it was really dangerous for us.

Yi said she wishes South Koreas $20 million contract with Russia had lasted more than three years. It meant she was and still is the only Korean to fly in space. She hopes to see at least two more Koreans in space within the next decade. (Retired NASA astronaut Mark Polansky, who logged more than 300 hours in space, is Korean-American.)

Its a great honor to be the first and only astronaut of South Korea, but at the same time Im kind of alone, she said. I have a huge responsibility, and much more eyes watching me is sometimes hard to handle.

She said she is fortunate to be an astronaut not because she beat out 35,999 applicants but because of the era in which we live.

Yi, who grew up in Gwangju, South Korea, earned her bachelors and masters degrees in mechanical engineering, followed by a Ph.D. in biological science from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Taejon. She also earned an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

She left the South Korean space program in 2014, then taught physics at Everett Community College in 2016. Now a Puyallup resident, Yi works with South Korean-based Studio XID and California-based Loft Orbital Solutions.

Yi, who also lectures at the University of Washington, said she is focused on nurturing the next generation of STEM (science, techology, engineering and mathematics) leaders.

The next generation is really important, she said. They are the future.

Sara Bruestle: 425-339-3046; sbruestle@heraldnet.com; @sarabruestle.

Next generation

Meet the next generation of STEM leaders in Stanwood.

Cole Welch, a Running Start student at Everett Community College, will be demonstrating LEGO robotics before Yi So-yeons talk.

A LEGO robotics instructor for the Community Resource Center of Stanwood-Camano, Welch, 18, teaches children how to build and program Mindstorms EV3 robots.

Were building the robots to help (the kids) learn, he said. We build different ones each month.

The high school senior likes to do math in his spare time. He competes in local Knowledge and Science bowls through Stanwood High School.

I love to see how seemingly abstract math concepts can be applied very practically, he said.

Welch is interested in majoring in physics and math at one of the eight colleges for which hes applied. He knows he wants to go into research, but hasnt figured out what hell research just yet.

He thinks its cool that Yi taught physics at his community college. Im really interested in what she has to say, Welch said. If he were only a few years older, he might have been able to take her class.

Ramona Reed, a sixth-grader at Stanwood Middle School, is serving as an assistant to event coordinator Christine Russell. She said Yi is her idol and that she cant wait to meet the astronaut.

The 11-year-old said science and math are by far her favorite subjects. She asks for extra assignments from her STEM teachers. Her science fair research topics have included black holes and how best to calm a stressed horse. One of her hobbies is coding (another is riding horses).

When she grows up, Ramona expects to take over the family business Interface Technologies Northwest in Lynnwood but not before she gets her Ph.D. in physics.

Her advice for future STEM leaders? Make sure youre passionate.

If you want to do science, you have to be able to put the work into it or put your mind to it, she said. If you dont actually like it, theres no point in doing it.

She likened finding yourself in a STEM career that doesnt make you happy to getting sucked into a black hole: Youre stuck in that black hole, and youre not going to be able to get out.

If you go

South Koreas first and still only astronaut, Yi So-yeon will talk on To The Moon and Beyond from 4 to 6 p.m. Nov. 23 at the Stanwood High School Performing Arts Center, 7400 272nd St. NW, Stanwood. Pre-lecture STEM activities and live music are scheduled for 3 p.m.

Yis Stanwood visit is sponsored by the Community Resource Center of Stanwood-Camano, Sno-Isle Libraries and the city of Stanwood.

Although the event is free, tickets are required. All tickets are spoken for. Call 360-629-5257, ext. 1002, to be put on a waiting list for returned tickets. Seating is first come, first served.

Gallery

Artist Val Paul Taylor, owner of the Guilded Gallery in Stanwood, painted this portrait of South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon in honor of her visit to Stanwood.

Originally posted here:
Korea's first and only astronaut shares her story in Stanwood - The Daily Herald

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A dozen bottles of fine French wine arrived at the space station Monday, not for the astronauts, but for science.

The red Bordeaux wine will age for a year up there before returning to Earth. Researchers will study how weightlessness and space radiation affect the aging process. The goal is to develop new flavors and properties for the food industry.

The bottles flew up aboard a Northrop Grumman capsule that launched from Virginia on Saturday and arrived at the International Space Station on Monday. Each bottle was packed in a metal canister to prevent breakage.

Universities in Bordeaux, France, and Bavaria, Germany, are taking part in the experiment from Space Cargo Unlimited, a Luxembourg startup.

Winemaking uses both yeast and bacteria, and involves chemical processes, making wine ideal for space study, said University of Erlangen-Nuremberg's Michael Lebert, the experiment's scientific director, in a company video.

The space-aged wine will be compared to Bordeaux wine aged on Earth. What's left will go to those who helped pay for the research, according to a company spokeswoman.

This is the first of six space missions planned by the company over the next three years touching on the future of agriculture given our changing world.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure," Nicolas Gaume, chief executive and co-founder of Space Cargo Unlimited, said in a statement.

NASA is opening the space station to more business opportunities like this and, eventually, even private astronaut missions.

The Cygnus capsule that pulled up to the space station on Monday contains multiple commercial ventures. Also on board: an oven for baking chocolate chip cookies, as well as samples of carbon fiber used by Italy's Lamborghini in its sports cars.

Budweiser has already sent barley seeds to the station, with an eye to becoming the beverage of choice on Mars. In 2015, a Japanese company known for its whiskey and other alcoholic drinks sent up samples. Scotch also made a visit to space in another experiment.

As for high-flying wine cellars, this isn't the first. A French astronaut took along a bottle of wine aboard shuttle Discovery in 1985. The bottle remained corked in orbit.

The space station's current crew includes three Americans, two Russians and an Italian, who might have preferred a good Chianti on board.

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Wine cellar in space: 12 bottles arrive for year of aging - Tuscaloosa News

People all over the world could get a chance to step on board the International Space Station thanks to a mind-blowing new virtual reality experience.

The project, called "Space Explorers: The ISS Experience," was created with the help of a 360-degree camera. That instrument was launched to the space station so the astronauts onboard could use it to show how science and life unfold 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth's surface.

This virtual reality enterprise is not just an outreach project for NASA; it also provides a chance to demonstrate cutting-edge camera technology. The studio behind this project, Felix and Paul Studios, had a high-definition camera, but their typical camera was about the size of a 4-foot (1.2 meters) tall tree, according to a NASA statement, which is far too large for the space station.

Related: The International Space Station: Inside and Out (Infographic)

A more compact camera launched to space aboard SpaceX's 16th commercial-resupply services mission. in December 2018. The virtual reality project, which the crew on the station is still filming, has captured moments ranging from crew meals to science experiments. That includes growing vegetables in space and experimenting with floating robots called SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites).

"Our focus has been thinking about and finding science experiments that, when you see them, you're immersed in them," Flix Lajeunesse, co-founder and creative director of Felix and Paul Studios, said in the same NASA statement. "Your mind can start spinning, thinking about what technologies are going to come next and how that research leads to a future path."

Unlike most Hollywood movies, in this project, the astronauts are both the stars and the people behind the camera, since usually only up to six people are on the space station at one time. While the project has not been released, based on initial feedback from astronauts who have actually been onboard the space station, it manages to give the viewer an incredible, accurate experience and looks quite real.

"It was like I was back there in and on the International Space Station," astronaut Suni Williams said in the same statement. "You forget you have [a VR headset] on your head, and you just keep looking around. It gives [you] a huge appreciation to all that is inside the space station and how people live and work."

The next filming challenge for this project will be capturing a spacewalk. A release date for the project hasn't yet been announced.

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

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Virtual Reality Project Shows Life and Science on the Space Station - Space.com

NASA is looking for ways to make a visit to the International Space Station a little more like a voyage to Mars.

Of course, nothing can ever truly replicate the experience of a Mars mission before humans embark on that journey for real. But NASA can prepare by mimicking as many different aspects of the trip as possible. So the agency is strategizing ways the space station can host such practice sessions without interfering with the orbiting lab's other priorities.

"My job is to imagine what a Mars mission would look like: Where would we go, what would we do, and how would we do it?" Michelle Rucker, an engineer at NASA's Exploration Mission Planning Office, said during a panel held at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington last month. "Going to Mars would be difficult, but fortunately, we don't have to start from scratch, because we've already built these other platforms that we can use to practice some of the operations that we would use on a human Mars mission."

More: NASA Wants 10 More Yearlong Space Station Missions for Mars PrepRelated: International Space Station at 20: A Photo Tour

Spaceflight professionals call those practice scenarios analog missions. The most striking Mars-analog missions so far are those that isolate crewmembers on Earth, perhaps in an exotic destination. But those analogs can't replicate specific characteristics of spaceflight, and that's why NASA decided to investigate ways that the agency could explicitly use the International Space Station as an analog for Mars missions.

"Every analog has some advantages, and every analog has some disadvantages," Julie Robinson, chief scientist of NASA's International Space Station Program, told Space.com. "It's worth thinking about what does [the space station] match and not match across all the different hazards of human spaceflight."

So NASA asked scientists, engineers and astronauts to consider how they could use time on the space station to better prepare for the long journey to Mars, ignoring the traditional constraints that rule on the orbiting laboratory. A team has been evaluating those possibilities and considering how they could be implemented.

Some aren't very feasible. For example, the team concluded, there's no straightforward way to adjust modules on the space station to mimic the squeeze that would be necessary for a Mars mission. That's better done on Earth.

The space station is also a more dynamic environment than a spacecraft headed to Mars would be, making the orbiting laboratory a poor model for the sort of social constraints Mars-bound astronauts would experience.

"The ISS is huge," Robinson said. "Compared to what I think is a likely Mars transit vehicle, it's a palace, and it has lots of coming and going." Trying to redesign these aspects of the space station as an analog would interfere dramatically with everything else about the space station.

But the team found that other key aspects of the long journey could be replicated onboard the space station. One priority is increasing the number of astronauts who remain in space for longer than the typical six-month stay, since a round-trip voyage to Mars would likely last about three years.

"On ISS, we've done a couple of one-year missions, and those have given us some concern," Robinson said. "We need to have enough crewmembers that have been on ISS for a longer period of time so that we really feel like we understand the variability in human responses to being in microgravity for that period of time."

Two NASA astronauts currently in orbit, Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan, will be spending a little longer than usual in flight. But before the agency can study longer flights in earnest, it needs its commercial crew providers, SpaceX and Boeing, to begin ferrying astronauts to the space station next year.

Time on the space station can also give NASA personnel a better sense of just how accurately they can prepare for a voyage that would take them far out of reach of any resupply missions. Rucker imagines an exercise in which mission staff attempt to plan out everything astronauts need for a specific period of time, then check how well the planning matched real crew needs.

"Was there anything not on the list? Did we forget something that, halfway to Mars, you would've said, 'Oh, we ran out of wet wipes,' or whatever," Rucker said. "It's a very simple thing to do, but if you are halfway to Mars and you're out of a critical item, it's not going to be a good day."

A second category of analogs relying on the space station makes use of returning crewmembers as they reaccustom themselves to dealing with terrestrial gravity. This serves as a model for the amount and type of activity astronauts could perform in their first hours on Mars. "What you can and can't assume the crew can do in the first day is a huge driver of the mass of the mission," Robinson said. That's because more impaired astronauts need more equipment; more equipment increases mission costs.

Right now, returning astronauts touch down in Kazakhstan, where it's difficult to run the types of tests NASA would want. And crewed SpaceX capsules will land in the ocean, where waves will interfere with the transition back to gravity. So for this type of test, NASA will have to wait until Boeing Starliner capsules are making their returns, which will be on land.

A final type of analog scenario involving the ISS is easier to implement, thanks to a recent upgrade to the station's computer facilities. These scenarios tackle the challenges of communication during a Mars mission.

Two such types of challenges face would-be Mars visitors: the sheer amount of time needed to hear back from colleagues on Earth during a time-sensitive situation and the occasional communications blackout, which would last up to two weeks. The latter is trickier to mimic on the space station, but practices that NASA already uses to prepare for spacewalks could become the basis for Mars blackout procedures, Robinson said.

And a recent computer update means that NASA can now implement a virtual communications lag that will allow everyone involved in a mission to practice dealing with such a distance from Earth. Right now, Robinson said, NASA is ready for scientists to develop specific scenarios to use that technology. "We don't want to just use it for a day for fun."

Having fun isn't a good way to mimic a Mars mission anyway, she added. "Think of a crew boarding that vehicle and waving goodbye and then being just the four of them for the next possibly three years," Robinson said. "That first leg of it, that first year, is like the worst family vacation you've ever imagined, because there's nothing to do."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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A Journey to Mars Starts on the Space Station - Space.com

Next year, not one, but two Maine astronauts will be aboard the International Space Station.Remember, just a few people are on board the station at a time. Maine native Chris Cassidy will be mission commander for the next expedition to the ISS which is scheduled to launch in April 2020.Cassidy, of York, will be joined by two Russian flight engineers, Nikolai Tikhonov and Andrei Babkin, who are going on their first mission to space.This will be Cassidys third trip into space, and his mission will overlap with another Maine astronaut, Jessica Meir, of Caribou.That's going to be pretty fun we'll overlap by 9 days I think right at the end before she comes home and right when I arrive and I hope we're able to set up some press conferences around the state with the two of us floating together it would be fun to share that excitement with the rest of the state.The mission is scheduled to end next October, just before the 20th anniversary of continuous habitation of the ISS.

Next year, not one, but two Maine astronauts will be aboard the International Space Station.

Remember, just a few people are on board the station at a time.

Maine native Chris Cassidy will be mission commander for the next expedition to the ISS which is scheduled to launch in April 2020.

Cassidy, of York, will be joined by two Russian flight engineers, Nikolai Tikhonov and Andrei Babkin, who are going on their first mission to space.

This will be Cassidys third trip into space, and his mission will overlap with another Maine astronaut, Jessica Meir, of Caribou.

That's going to be pretty fun we'll overlap by 9 days I think right at the end before she comes home and right when I arrive and I hope we're able to set up some press conferences around the state with the two of us floating together it would be fun to share that excitement with the rest of the state.

The mission is scheduled to end next October, just before the 20th anniversary of continuous habitation of the ISS.

Read more:
2 Mainers to be aboard International Space Station at same time - WMTW Portland

An Antares rocket blasts off from the launchpad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Nov. 2, 2019. The rocket sent the Cygnus spacecraft on a resupply journey to the International Space Station, carrying a payload that included seven small satellites made by students at U.S. universities.(Photo: Vivek Chacko/Arizona State University)

As the countdown began at NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, a crowd of engineers and scientists stood on bleachers in the sun, looking out across a grassy field and wetlands at a rocket on the launchpad.

Mission control announced: T-minus 10, 9, 8 The onlookers joined in, counting loudly: 3, 2, 1.

Smoke billowed from the launchpad and the rocket rose atop a column of white fire.

Liftoff of Antares, the voice from mission control said, and the crowd whooped and cheered.

On the bleachers, a group of nine young engineers and computer scientists watched the rocket until it disappeared into the blue sky. They hugged each other, elated at their achievement.

The group, all of them students or recent graduates of Arizona State University, built a miniature research satellite named Phoenix that launchedinto space aboard anAntares rocket headed for the International Space Station. The students creation weighs just 8.6 pounds and is about the size of a loaf of bread 12 inches long by 4 inches wide.

They designed the mini-satellite, known as a CubeSat, to study the urban heat islandeffect in Phoenix and six other cities across the country. They hope that by capturing infrared thermal images of the cities,the satellitewill generate block-by-block data on heat trends, which could help urban planners design cooler cityscapes to withstand the effects as the world continues to heat up due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Students Sarah Rogers, Vivek Chacko and Raj Biswas discuss testing an electrical interface board for the Phoenix CubeSat in a lab at Arizona State University.(Photo: Yegor Zenkov/Arizona State University)

Four years ago, the students wrote a proposal to build the satellite and obtained $200,000 in NASA funding. A total of about 80 undergraduate students took part in the project. Many of them spent long hours designing the spacecraft, piecing together the components, testing its systems, and writing code to make it all work.

For the core group who continued working on the CubeSat after graduating, the Nov. 2 launch was a milestone to celebrate.

It was probably the most memorable experience Ive ever had in my life, Sarah Rogers, the 22-year-old project manager, said.I shed a couple of tears of joy as I was watching it go up.

The rocket sent a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft soaring into orbit to resupply the space station. Along with the Phoenix satellite and other cargo, the spacecraft delivered six other CubeSats made by students at other universities.

The Phoenix CubeSat will remain aboard the space station until mid-January when its scheduled to deploy into orbit and begin using its infrared camera to capture thermal images of Phoenix and other cities.

Many other satellites are circling the Earth recording images, but almost all of them look at the visible spectrum of light or near-infrared, which helps scientists study vegetation. Thermal images arent as common.

From left to right, student Vivek Chacko, Assistant Professor Danny Jacobs, student Sarah Rogers, and Professor Judd Bowman pose with the Phoenix spacecraft at Arizona State University before the satellite was delivered to be launched into space.(Photo: Vivek Chacko/Arizona State University)

The idea for the satellitewas suggested to the students by Judd Bowman, a professor in the School Of Earth and Space Exploration who is the principal investigator and faculty sponsor of the project.When the students started working on the project, many of them were freshmen just starting to study engineering or computer science.

They began as a team with a lot of excitement but no experience, Danny Jacobs, an assistant professor and faculty adviser on the project, said.The most important thing to come out of this mission are the 80 students that worked on it.

Jacobs said the project is ambitious, and the delivery of the satellite in August was a major success.

Once the spacecraftis in orbit, it will produce heat maps that show trends at the neighborhood level and over time, providing valuable data that city planners will be able to put to use, Jacobs said.

In addition to focusing on Phoenix, the plan is for the satellite to gather thermal images of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Baltimore and Minneapolis.

Alongside the rises in global temperatures unleashed byclimate change, urban heat islands add to hotter conditions in cities. The vast areas that are paved over with concrete and asphalt soak up the suns heat, and then radiate it at night, pushing temperatures higher.

Extreme summer heat has long been part of life in Phoenix, which is the countys hottest major city. But climate change and the heat island effect are combining to drive temperatures to new highs.

The number of record-hot summer days has risen dramatically in the past decade. Nights have also grown warmer. And heat-associated deaths in the Phoenix area are on the rise, reaching a record of 182 deaths reported in Maricopa County last year.

Long-term strategies for combatting heat in cities range from installing cool roofs that reflect more sunlight to planting trees to give neighborhoods more shade.

Rogers and other members of the ASU team hope that data collected by the satellite will help guide decisions about these sorts of remedies by capturing block-by-block images showing areas that are hotter or cooler.

RECORD HIGH: Heat deaths in Phoenix reached a record high in 2018

Working in a lab at Arizona State University, students discuss how satellite components will connect with each other.(Photo: Yegor Zenkov/Arizona State University)

The students worked on the satellite in a lab in the basement of ASUs Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building 4.

Rogers, who was born and raised in Tempe, majored in aerospace engineering and had joined the Sun Devil Satellite Laboratory during her freshman year in 2015. That fall, she and other students got word from Bowman that NASA was offering grants allowing undergraduates to take on projects such as building CubeSats.

Bowman recruited some students to work on the design and others to start analyzing the science side of the project. Rogers took on the job of project manager.

In April 2016, the team learned that they would receive NASA funding. They started selecting off-the-shelf components, buying two of each so they would have an engineering model and spare parts to draw from if needed.

The students designed and built the satellite's structure, as well as interface ports for data and power, Rogers said.

They encountered challenges in deciphering how to integrate the parts, and in staying on track with the timeline. They developed lab procedures for working with the hardware to make sure they werent damaging anything as they assembled the satellite.

Rogers graduated in May with her bachelors degree and stayed on this fall to start a masters degree program in aerospace engineering at ASU.

Student Sarah Rogers holds the miniature satellite Phoenix, which she and other students built at Arizona State University.(Photo: School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University)

Last summer, she and other students focused on the finishing touches, often working late into the night taking apart the pieces and putting them back together, and finishing the software. Rogers said she usually arrived at the lab at 7 a.m. and worked until midnight.

In August, Rogers and fellow teammate Vivek Chacko flew to Houston to hand-deliver the spacecraft.

The students are now preparing for the next phase, which will involve operating the satellite from a station on the ASU campus in Tempe.

Phoenixs infrared camera is equipped with a lens that will capture 68 meters per pixel, allowing the satellite to make thermal images down to a resolution showing city blocks.

Some of the students created detailed maps of each city dividing the landscape into 17 climate zones, ranging from compact low-rise to open mid-rise to scattered trees.

Once the team gets thermal images from space, they plan to overlay them on the climate-zone maps to analyze what theyre seeing. They also plan to check temperatures recorded in the thermal images against on-the-ground measurements.

What we plan to do is analyze how the makeup of our urban infrastructure itself is contributing to having warmer areas, Rogers said. She said the results should help show how we can either adjust building materials or adjust the layout of the urban infrastructure to make our cities a lot more sustainable for future generations.

Mission manager Jake Cornish of the company Nanoracks checks that the Phoenix CubeSat, which was built by students at Arizona State University, is sized correctly to be deployed from the International Space Station.(Photo: Vivek Chacko/Arizona State University)

They calculate that the satellitewill be in space for two years before it reenters the atmosphere and burns up. They hope itwill function for at least a year to study changes during the four seasons.

Once Rogers and her team analyze the data, they intend to present the information to city planners.

Our mission is novel, and the way that were studying the urban heat island effect itself is also still relatively new within the scientific community, Rogers said. So, were really excited to get data back and start analyzing it.

She said with the effects of climate change worsening in recent years, one of her teams main goals has been to build a piece of technology that will enable cities to pinpoint actions that can help combat heat.

COULD PHOENIX BE NEXT?: L.A. installs off-white streets to beat heat.

For now, Phoenix has been placed inside a deployer pod on the space station. Sometime in January, astronauts plan to deploy the CubeSatinto orbit. If all goes as planned, a door will pop open and a spring will eject the satelliteinto space.

Rogers and her colleagues are looking forward to watching a NASA livestream as the satellite tumbles off into space a motion that will slow and stop once the control system kicks in.

For now, the team has been sharing a video that Rogers classmate Trevor Bautista recorded of the rocket thundering into the sky in Virginia.

It feels so incredible to know that Phoenix is soon going to be able to do everything that weve designed it to do, and really make a difference, Rogers said. Honestly, I just feel over the moon.

In fact, Rogers said shes inspired by NASAs plans for returning to the moon with astronauts. And the Phoenix CubeSat mission has helped her prepare for the next phase of her space career.

She said her goal is to work as a systems engineer on other missions, building spacecraft to study planets and enable humans to learn more about the universe.

Reach reporter Ian James at ian.james@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8246. Follow him on Twitter: @ByIanJames

Support local journalism:Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and at OurGrandAZ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Satellite built by students soars to space on mission to map heat in Phoenix, other cities - AZCentral

Space-based businesses dont all have to be about communications or Earth observation European startup Space Cargo Unlimited, for instance, is focused on what operating in a microgravity environment can unlock for research and manufacturing. Accordingly, the company just launched an unusual payload to the International Space Station (ISS) 12 bottles of wine.

The wine is not leisure-time supplies for the astronauts on board the ISS; instead, its part of an experiment that will study how the aging process for wine is affected by a microgravity, space-based environment. Wine samples taken from the same batch will be aged simultaneously on Earth over the same 12-month period, and then the results will be compared when the ISS wine shipment returns on a future cargo craft trip back.

One of the wine samples in its protective container prior to launch

Both the Earth and the ISS wine samples will remain sealed in their glass bottle environments, and theyll be kept at a constant temperature of around 18 degrees celsius (or around 64 degrees Fahrenheit), undisturbed, to let the interior complex biological environment of the bottles do their work. Researchers predict there will be taste differences that result from the effect that microgravity and space-based radiation will have on physical and chemical reactions, but the only way to find out for sure is to give it a shot.

It sure sounds like this could set up a new line of literally space-aged wines that command a pretty premium, but Space Cargo Unlimited says that their work is more following in the footsteps of Louis Pasteur, who essentially developed pasteurization though experiments with wine fermentation. To that end, its hoping this experiment will produce results that could have broader applications across food preservation and the related technologies.

Space Cargo Unlimiteds wine samples launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, loaded onto a Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which successfully docked with the ISS on Monday morning.

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A startup just launched red wine to the International Space Station to age for 12 months - TechCrunch