Category Archives: Space Station

Takeoff of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo for a suborbital test flight. Virgin Galactic's spaceship is carried to high altitude by plane before turning on its rocket engine to go to space.

On Tuesday morning, Boeing announced that it intends to invest $20 million in Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by Richard Branson.

Virgin Galactic is currently in the process of finalizing an $800 million deal to merge with with Social Capital Hedosophia, which will result in it becoming a publicly traded company. Thats expected to happen before the end of 2019. Boeings investment will come as a result of buying shares in the publicly traded entity.

In a statement, the two companies hinted they would be working on projects together, but only said that information about them would be shared in the future.

Both companies are readying to put humans in space within the next few months. Virgin Galactic has successfully taken astronauts into suborbital space and is preparing for its first commercial flights. In August, the company revealed the interiors of its new spaceport. To date, the company has sold 603 tickets to fly on its spacecraft and said it will resume selling tickets once it has begun commercial operations.

Boeing is currently working on its Starliner crewed capsule, which its developing under a contract with NASA. (Elon Musks SpaceX is also developing a crewed space capsule for NASA under the same program.) Once completed, the capsule is intended to take astronauts to the International Space Station, ending the space agencys reliance on Russian spacecraft to ferry astronauts back and forth. The company is expected to make its first orbital test flight for Starliner shortly, though the exact timing has yet to be announced.

The rest is here:
Boeing Plans To Invest $20 Million In Space Tourism Company Virgin Galactic - Forbes

If you like volcanoes, eastern Russia is the place to be. The Kamchatka peninsula and environs are loaded with active volcanoes that erupt quite often.

South of the peninsula is a long archipelago called the Kuril Islands, dropping as far south as Japan (in fact Russia and Japan dispute the sovereignty of some of the volcanoes in the southern part). All of these islands are the tops of volcanoes, created as the Pacific tectonic plate slips beneath the Okhotsk plate to the west. There are over 100 volcanoes there, and nearly half of them are active.

One, which you'd easily miss on a map, is called Raikoke. It's only a couple of kilometers across, and has a crater in the middle 700 meters across and 200 deep. As volcanoes go it's a fair-to-middlin' one. It erupted a couple of times in the 18th century (one of which destroyed the upper third of the island!) and again in 1924. After that, it lay quiet for nearly a century.

Then, on June 22, 2019, it blew its lid off again. Now mind you, this is not a heavily inhabited region of the world (fewer than 20,000 people live in the whole archipelago), so getting close-up pictures of the event isn't likely.

unless you happen to include a thousand or so kilometers away as "close-up". Maybe not, but if most of that is across the vacuum of space, you still get incredible photos, like this one taken by an astronaut on board the International Space Station:

Whoaaaaaa. That's phenomenal. It was taken a few hours after the eruption, as the ISS passed over that part of the world. You can see the ash cloud rising, punching its way through the troposphere and right up into the stratosphere. The hot gas and ash plume rises due to convection (like a hot air balloon rising), and stops when the density of the air around it is the same as the density inside the plume. At that altitude it won't rise any more, but stuff still keeps coming up from underneath, so the plume flattens and spreads outward, creating the anvil shape you also see with really strong cumulonimbus storm clouds (and for the same reason).

It was also seen by NASA's Earth-observing Terra satellite, this time from nearly straight above it:

You can get a sense of the anvil, and see the prevailing winds taking the ash to the east. Some parts of the plume may have reached heights of about 17 kilometers. The plume has a lot of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in it, which got injected into the stratosphere.

Interestingly, once up there SO2 can be converted by sunlight into a sulfate aerosol, small particles that have a lot of sulfur in them. These are efficient at reflecting sunlight, so can actually cool the planet a wee bit. After huge eruptions the average temperature of the planet can drop a little but not much, not nearly enough to keep up with how much we're warming it. The effect is temporary anyway, since these wash out of the sky in rain. And that's bad too since when dissolved in water it creates weak sulfuric acid acid rain.

I was initially surprised to find out that the overwhelming majority of sulfur dioxide in our air is created by humans. But after thinking about it and putting it in context, this makes sense: For example, humans emit 100 times as much carbon dioxide into the air annually than volcanoes do!

A volcanic eruption is a titanic event, sowing chaos and seemingly dwarfing our own endeavors. But it's short lived, and as powerful as it may be, humans wield far more destructive forces. It's really far past time we learned better how to wield them or sheathe them.

See more here:
A volcano blows its top, seen from space - SYFY WIRE

A safe conclusion to the latest long-duration spaceflight Calling on industry to help us accelerate our return to the Moon And practice makes perfect beforethe real thing a few of the stories to tell you about This Week at NASA!

Expedition 60 Crew Returns Safely from International Space Station

The International Space Stations Expedition 60 crew including our Nick Hague is back on Earth, after landing safely in Kazakhstan Oct. 3. The landing capped off a 203-day mission on the orbital complex for Hague and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, while Visiting Astronaut Hazzaa Ali Almansoori of the United Arab Emirates spent 8 days on the station. Meanwhile, our Christina Koch, Andrew Morgan, Jessica Meir, and others still aboard the station plan to conduct what may become a record pace of 10 spacewalks during the next three months. The series of spacewalks, which could kick off as soon as Oct. 6 will be used to replace some batteries for the solar arrays and to refurbish a scientific instrument that explores the fundamental nature of the universe.

Fast-Track to the Moon: NASA Opens Call for Artemis Lunar Landers

The Sept. 30 call out to American companies for proposals to design and develop human lunar landing systems for our Artemis program is expected to be our final solicitation for these systems that will send the first woman and next man to the surface of the Moon by 2024. Based on industry feedback to earlier draft solicitations, NASA adjusted some requirements to help fast-track our return to the Moon, while preserving all the agencys human safety measures. We expect to make multiple awards from the solicitation. The first company to complete its lander will carry astronauts to the surface of the Moon in 2024, and the second company will land in 2025.

NASA Seeks Industry Input on Hardware Production for Lunar Spacesuit

We are currently designing and developing a new spacesuit system, called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit or xEMU, for use during Artemis missions at the Moon and adaptable for missions to other destinations. To that end, weve sent out a request for information seeking input from industry on a strategy for production of lunar spacesuits that will support a steady stream of Artemis missions over the next decade and beyond.

SLS Pathfinder Hardware Will Help Teams Prepare for Artemis Moon Mission

The core stage pathfinder for ourSpace Launch System or SLSrocket was delivered recently by our Pegasus barge to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Thecore stage pathfinderis one of three full-scale mockups of SLS flight hardware that will be used to train crews on best practices for moving, handling and lifting the various parts of the rocket in preparation forArtemis I, an uncrewed flight test that is the first lunar mission of SLS and our Orion spacecraft.

Cassini Data Finds New Organic Compounds on Saturns Moon

Data from our Cassini mission to Saturn which ended in Sept. 2017 have discovered molecules of organic compounds on Saturns moon Enceladus that are similar to compounds involved in the production of amino acids the building blocks of life here on Earth. The newly-discovered molecules of nitrogen and oxygen-bearing compounds were detected on material ejected from the moons core into space by powerful hydrothermal vents.

Thats whats up this week @NASA

Like Loading...

Related

Read the rest here:
This Week @ NASA: Expedition 60 Crew Returns Safely from the Space Station - SCVTV

Cancer cells are to be transported into space to see if weightlessness can stop their growth, in one of nine research projects destined for the new China Space Station (CSS) in 2022.

Upon completion, the CSS will include a cancer research project called Tumours in Space, headed by a Canadian researcher based in Norway. The project will examine the roles of both microgravity and cosmic radiation in tumour growth and development. The project is one of just nine selected by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) under their programme to provide scientists from all over the world with the opportunity to fly experiments on the CSS.

The plan is to send three-dimensional stem cell organoids from both healthy and cancer tissue from the same person into space. Here we will study mutations and look at how the cells DNA is affected by weightlessness and cosmic radiation, said the projects principal investigator Tricia L. Larose.

The experiment will rely on three-dimensional cancerous tumours, called organoids. These organoids are grown from adult human stem cells, which are a kind of cell that can divide indefinitely and create different types of cells in doing so. Researchers have perfected their ability to grow organoids so they actually form tiny structures that mimic different organs. Larose theorises that the cancer organoid growth will slow or stop when they are not affected by Earths gravity. Previous research on two-dimensional cells has shown that weightlessness has an influence on gene expression linked to tumour development.

When we look at mutational signatures in cancer cells, there is a lot of noise. The noise is something we simply do not know a lot about, she said. Part of my experimental process is identifying new causes of that noise, and some of that might be gravity

Her theory is that some of the unknown noise in the cancer cells is there as a result of gravity. Since both healthy cells and cells with cancer are affected by gravity, the researchers should be able to detect this in the fingerprints in all our cells.

Im looking for the molecular fingerprint for the gravitational force, she said; this could help explain the meaning of some of the noise in the cancer cells.

She added that the mutational signature of gravity has never been studied or even proposed as a concept. The experiment will also test how cosmic radiation affects the DNA of the healthy organoids and whether this leads to mutations and cancer. The various causes of cancer, such as smoking, UV radiation and ionizing radiation, also leave mutational signatures. Identifying mutational signatures from cancer-causing exposures can be used for risk prediction, eventually leading to better diagnostics and therapeutics.

My ground-based research with ionising radiation will also help us understand the side effects of radiation therapy for cancer patients on Earth, she said.

The studies of cosmic radiation will also help with understanding the cancer risk for astronauts on long-duration missions in the space station, or longer journeys, such as to Mars.

The biggest challenge with human spaceflight and exploration for long-duration missions to Mars and beyond, is the cancer risk for crew due to exposure of cosmic radiation. By identifying the mutational signature of cosmic radiation and comparing that to the known signature of ionising radiation, we may be better able to predict risk and protect crew on a long-duration space mission Larose said.

It is thought that astronauts on a mission to Mars would be exposed to at least 60 per cent of the total radiation dose limit recommended for their career during the journey alone to and from the Red Planet.

Sign up to the E&T News e-mail to get great stories like this delivered to your inbox every day.

Follow this link:
Cancer cells to be tested in zero gravity on Chinese Space Station - E&T Magazine

Images courtesy of NASA and heavens-above.com

Per a recent update from the Cape Hatteras National Seashore (CHNS), the International Space Station (ISS) will be flying over Cape Hatteras on Thursday night starting at 7:57 p.m. Assuming skies are clear, the ISS will look like a bright star arriving from the West-Northwest before disappearing in the Southeastern sky at 8:02 p.m.

Per the CHNS, there are currently two cosmonauts from Russia and four astronauts from the U.S. and Italy on board the ISS, and they are conducting a variety of science experiments ranging from the 3-D printing of human organs to studying the structure of car tires. Among the U.S. group is North Carolina State graduate Christina Koch who, upon her return to Earth in February of 2020, will set the record for the longest spaceflight for a woman providing NASA with information about how the body reacts in space for future missions to the Moon and Mars.

For more information on the ISSs current location, visit https://heavens-above.com/

Read more from the original source:
International Space Station flying over Cape Hatteras Thursday Night - Island Free Press

October 8, 2019Posted in: Research

The National Science Foundation, Divisions of Chemical, Bioengineering and Environmental Transport (CBET) and Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Infrastructure (CMMI) in the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF) under solicitation NSF 20-500, are partnering with The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) to solicit research projects in the general fields of tissue engineering and mechanobiology that can utilize the International Space Station (ISS) National Lab to conduct research that will benefit life on Earth. Only U.S. entities including academic investigators, non-profit independent research laboratories and academic-commercial teams are eligible to apply.

If you are interesting in applying for this funding opportunity, please start a routing sheet as soon as possible. As a reminder, proposals must be completed and submitted to OSRP at least 2 business days prior January 10, 2020. If you should have any questions, please contact OSRP.Please be aware that while the submission deadline for the proposal is March 2020, the feasibilityreview form is due by January 10, 2020.

Read more:
NSF/CASIS Collaboration on Tissue Engineering and Mechanobiology on the International Space Station (ISS) to Benefit Life on Earth - IIT Today

MONCTON Mylne Desprs, the founder of La Station Support, has teamed up with Dan Gillis, co-founder of Porpoise and owner of the Botsford Station, to gather community-minded entrepreneurs and organizations in a co-working space.

La Station is renting space on the second floor of the former hat factory on 232 Botsford St. This is a new offering by the company, which was launched last year to support entrepreneurs with administrative and operational services.

Theres going to be the support piece but also the work space piece because I find it goes hand in hand, Desprs said. Its not just for me to support and get clients, but its for everybody to support each other and create a community.

La Station is looking for non-profit organizations, solo entrepreneurs, artists, and small business owners that want to make a positive impact in the community to be its members.

I realize that theres so many people in Moncton doing good things and everybodys just kind of siloed. This new adventure for me is just a way to get all these people together, helping each other, collaborating and growing together, Desprs said. It doesnt matter what theyre doing and in which capacity theyre bettering our comunnity. I think thats what differentiates us.

Currently, there are about 10 members working in the space, including Branch Graphic Design, The Garden Cities Project, and an art collective.

Desprs has rooms available for workshops. Bigger classrooms will be added as the buildings renovation moves forward and the third floor opens up in the second and third phases of the project.

The space has a kitchen, call rooms, meeting rooms with Smart TVs, high speed internet, coffee and an espresso machine for use by members, community tables, and standing desks. Its also available for event rentals on weekends.

Desprs wants the space to feel like a restaurant or coffee shop, and for people to move around and interact. But she also plans to have some dedicated desks in the future in response to market demand.

And we are going as eco-friendly as we can, repurposing the space but also the furniture. Everything is recycled, she said.

Currently, the second floor is being shared with the staff of Porpoise and Alongside. The La Station portion of the space can accommodate 45 seats and has standing space for 90 people.

Desprs plans to host networking events that allow deeper conversations to happen.

I really feel like a community that learns together stays together, she said.

Gillis, who has owned the building for 10 years, is helping Desprs get the project up and running. He said the idea resonates with how the building, constructed between 1910 and 1913, was preserved with the help of community volunteers when he bought it in 2009.

When we first moved in, it was a community project and we wanted to transform this building with the power of community and this volunteer-driven initiative, he said. Our original vision was that it would be a place for people and ideas to come to life. So through that whole process, we actually hosted a number of different businesses.

Desprs and Gillis had known each other through their involvement in the community. But a Huddle article about La Station sparked an idea for Gillis to collaborate with Desprs. The move finally happened when Amanda Hachey, co-director of social innovation lab NouLAB, heard about Desprs plan and told her to connect with Gillis.

We have the start of something. We have essentially 6,600 square feet that we can grow into and a whole third floor above us for the expansion of this idea and the project. But what we didnt have was really the capacity to lead this project, Gillis said.

Having visited various co-working spaces around the world through Porpoise, Gillis noticed that those that are run well have good community managers.

What I saw inMylne was shes really entrenched herself in community for these past several years and has really established the network that I think is going to make a project like this possible.

Co-working spaces also generally have a theme and a focus area, he said. La Station focuses on creativity, innovation and a community spirit. Desprs hopes it will be a complementary addition to the larger co-working community.

Collaboration over competition, thats always been my motto, she said.

For now, members have access to the building only during working hours and would have to contact Desprs for access outside of those times. But La Station plans to use an app-based security system in the future.

Once signed up, members also have access to an online community on Slack.

Memberships cost between $125 and $250 a month. The daily rate for a desk is $20 and meeting room rentals range between $25 and $150.Community members can also sign up for a $200/year membership to get discounted access to events, workshops, meeting rooms, and online community.

An launch event is planned on November 13, from 5-7 p.m.

Read this article:
Moncton's La Station Is A Co-Working Space For Everyone From Artists To Solo Entrepreneurs - Huddle Today

STORY WRITTEN FORCBS NEWS& USED WITH PERMISSION

A Soyuz rocket carrying a Russian commander, a NASA co-pilot and a United Arab Emirates guest cosmonaut blasted off from Kazakhstan Wednesday, chased down the International Space Station and glided in for a picture-perfect docking, kicking off an unprecedented end-of-year schedule that includes up to a dozen spacewalks.

With Soyuz MS-15/61S commander Oleg Skripochka at the controls, flanked on the left by flight engineer Jessica Meir and on the right by Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, the Soyuz-FG rocket roared to life and climbed away at 9:57:43 a.m. EDT (6:57 p.m. local time), the moment Earths rotation carried the pad into the plane of the stations orbit.

The launching came one day after the Japanese space agency launched an unpiloted HTV cargo ship toward the station carrying a set of replacement batteries for the labs solar power system and equipment to help repair a $2 billion cosmic ray detector.

After a problem-free climb to space, Skripochka and Meir monitored a four-orbit rendezvous with the space station, moving in for docking at the aft port of the Russian Zvezda module at 3:42 p.m.

Standing by to welcome their new crewmates aboard were Expedition 60 commander Alexey Ovchinin, fellow cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Christina Koch and Drew Morgan. The first major item on the expanded crews agenda is arrival of the HTV cargo ship Saturday morning.

Five spacewalks are planned next month to replace 12 aging batteries with six more powerful lithium-ion power packs carried up in the HTVs cargo bay.

Another half dozen EVAs are planned in November and December to repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an unprecedented sequence that will come amid ongoing cargo delivery missions, a full slate of on-board research, a Russian spacewalk and possible visits by commercial crew ships being built by Boeing and SpaceX.

Meir, who holds a private pilots license and a doctorate in marine biology, served as Skripochkas co-pilot in the Soyuzs cramped cockpit, trained to take over in an emergency and fly the spacecraft if needed. Shes also received spacewalk training and hopes to venture outside the station at some point during her stay.

Skripochka is making his third trip to the station and is expected to participate in a Russian spacewalk in November. He is a veteran of three previous EVAs.

Hes a great guy, Meir said. Hes an experienced cosmonaut, so he brings a lot of knowledge and experience to the table for us. Its my first spaceflight and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, the very first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates, is also brand new, hes only been training as an astronaut for a year. So we often look to Oleg for advice.

Almansoori is the tenth Spaceflight Participant to visit the lab complex and the first since Cirque du Soleils Guy Laliberte in 2009.

This mission is a great milestone, for me personally and for my country, the United Arab Emirates, and for the whole Arab region in general, Almansoori said in a preflight briefing. Im looking forward to joining the crew on the station and to work with them on a daily basis and to conduct experiments. Im looking forward to coming back with knowledge and experience to share with everyone.

A jet fighter pilot, Almansoori is sponsored by the UAE government. But as with earlier space tourists, he will enjoy a relatively short stay in orbit eight days before returning to Earth Oct. 3 with Ovchinin and Hague, who are wrapping up a 202-day mission.

Ovchinin, Hague and Koch took off aboard the Soyuz MS-12/58S spacecraft on March 14. Kochs stay aboard the station has been extended to February and she will join Skvortsov and Parmitano for the ride home aboard their Soyuz MS-13/59S spacecraft after nearly a year 328 days in space.

Koch will set a new record for longest single flight by a female astronaut on Dec. 28, moving past Peggy Whitsons mark of 289 days.

Almansoori will take Kochs seat aboard the MS-12/58S ferry ship coming down on Oct. 3. Morgan, who launched with Skvortsov and Parmitano on July 20, will join Skripochka and Meir when they return to Earth next April. His flight will span 255 days.

The Soyuz launching Wednesday, along with Japans launch of an HTV cargo ship Tuesday (U.S. time), kicks off one of the most challenging station schedules ever attempted with up to 11 U.S. spacewalks planned between now and the end of the year and a Russian EVA in November.

Along with the HTV-8 arrival Saturday, the crew expects to welcome three more cargo ships and, possibly, Boeings CST-100 Starliner crew ferry ship if NASA clears it for launch before the end of the year on a long-awaited unpiloted test flight.

Boeing and SpaceX are both building commercial crew ferry ships to end NASAs sole reliance on the Soyuz. But the program has suffered a series of funding shortfalls and technical problems, and its not yet clear when either company will be clear to launch astronaut crews on initial test flights.

Its a critical issue for NASA because the Russians only plan to launch two Soyuz spacecraft next year, one in March and the other in October. In the absence of an American ferry ship, the station crew will drop from six to three next April when Skripochka, Meir and Morgan return to Earth.

SpaceXs first piloted test flight, known as Demo-2, is on hold following an explosion during a ground test in April that destroyed an earlier vehicle. The Demo-2 mission, whenever it eventually flies, will carry two NASA astronauts to the station for an eight-day mission.

Boeings first piloted test flight, a mission known as CFT, will last a full six months, and that is the flight NASA is counting on to keep the station fully staffed until one or both companies begin operational crew rotation flights.

A lot of the commercial crew dates have been a little bit in flux lately, Meir said. But it does look like we should be seeing the (unpiloted) Boeing flight, I think that will happen during our mission, and Ive been receiving training on the ground to help make sure that that mission is successful.

We do also, of course, hope we see some of the first commercial crew astronauts during our mission. That would be excellent. The key is being flexible and being able to adapt. Thats something our training really allows us to do. Well be ready for any scenario.

The upcoming spacewalks pose the most significant near-term challenge with five needed to install the batteries brought up aboard the HTV-8 spacecraft and up to a half dozen needed to repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a high-priority particle physics experiment mounted on the stations power truss.

The AMS instrument was not designed to be repaired by spacewalking astronauts and NASA planners say the EVAs needed to fix a failing pump and carry out other upgrades represent the most complex spacewalks since repairs of the Hubble Space Telescope. The AMS EVAs will be carried out by Parmitano and Morgan.

The battery installation work is not as technically complex, but it poses additional challenges, requiring spacewalkers to work near the limit of the robot arms reach on the far left end of the stations solar power truss. NASA has not yet named the astronauts who will carry out the battery work, but Meir, Koch and Morgan have all been trained.

Im really looking forward to the potential to do a spacewalk, since thats really what Ive always envisioned myself doing, really, my whole life, Meir said.

The stations power truss stretches the length of a football field and features eight huge solar wings, four on each end arranged in pairs. The arrays rotate like slow-motion paddle wheels as the station flies through its orbit to maximize the amount of sunlight reaching the solar cells.

When the station is in sunlight, power is fed directly to the labs myriad electrical systems. At the same time, they re-charge four sets of massive batteries housed at the base of each set of arrays. When the station moves into orbital darkness, the batteries seamlessly kick in to keep the station powered.

The stations eight electrical power channels originally were supported by 48 nickel-hydrogen NiH2 batteries, six per channel. Twenty-four batteries, in two sets of 12, were mounted at the bases of the solar array wings on the starboard, or right, side of the stations main truss with two sets of 12 on the port, or left, side.

But the original batteries have lost strength over the years and NASA is in the process of replacing all four sets with 24 smaller, more efficient lithium-ion Li-Ion batteries. The replacement units pack twice the punch, so only six are needed per set.

The HTV-6 cargo ship delivered the first set of replacements in December 2016. They were installed on the starboard 4, or S4, solar array segment during two spacewalks in January 2017. NASA installed a second set, delivered by the HTV-7 cargo ship, last September on the port 4, or P4 arrays.

The third set, launched Tuesday, will be installed on the far left end, or port 6, segment of the power truss.

Assuming the work goes smoothly, NASA managers hope to begin the AMS repair work in early to mid November. Five to six spacewalks may be necessary.

The $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a project led by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, was designed to detect high energy cosmic rays and measure any antimatter that might be present to learn more about dark matter, dark energy and by extension, the evolution of the cosmos. The instrument was carried up on the next-to-last shuttle mission and installed in May 2011

Its a pretty incredible piece of machinery, its actually measuring high energy radiation, cosmic rays coming from different stars, it is looking for evidence of antimatter and dark matter to begin to answer more questions about the origin of our universe, Meir said.

Unfortunately, one of the pumps thats vital to the thermal control system of that instrument is broken. Well, its not broken yet, but it is degrading. And so were going to do a series of spacewalks during the mission in order to fix that pump. It wasnt designed to be fixed (in space).

That makes the work kind of like the Hubble Space Telescope scenario where you didnt actually design tools for it or interfaces for it, Meir said. So its a very complex and challenging spacewalk, and were very excited to conduct that during our mission.

See the original post here:
Soyuz ferries three crew members to space station - Spaceflight Now

If NASA is ever going to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024, it's going to need new spacesuits for lunar exploration. But before astronauts ever don those suits on the moon, they'll test "walk" them on the International Space Station in 2023, according to the engineer backing the program.

NASA's Artemis moon program aims to land the first astronauts at the south pole of the moon in 2024, but the agency's current spacesuit design called the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU is designed for floating spacewalks (also known as extra-vehicular activities or EVAs), not clambering around a rocky, lunar surface.

NASA's in-house Advanced Space Suit Project is one of several spacesuit efforts the agency has pursued in recent years, to develop ways to explore deep space. In November 2016, according to a 2017 NASA Office of Inspector General report, the project centered its efforts on a new generation of EVA suit, now known as the xEMU. And so far, the agency is still holding to its timeline of testing the xEMU in orbit in 2023.

Related: The Evolution of the Spacesuit in Pictures

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

NASA is developing the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU, as a spacesuit for astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

(Image credit: NASA)

"We've made a lot of progress and iterated on this design, so now we have a very mature system overall," NASA spacesuit engineer Lindsay Aitchison said Sept. 11 during the American Astronautical Society's Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

So far the xEMU has gone through more than 30 runs in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, the huge swimming pool astronauts use to train for spacewalks, Aitchison said.

The xEMU recently passed its preliminary design review, which is a major development stage showing that the baseline design appears to be operationally effective. Next up is design development testing, Aitchison added, followed by testing a full version of the suit on the ISS in 2023. Only if the spacesuit passes those orbital trials would it be used by astronauts on the lunar surface in 2024.

While the Trump administration only told NASA in March to land on the moon in 2024, the agency has been working on improving its exploration-class (or planetary surface-based) spacesuits for more than a decade. The iconic Apollo moon spacesuit of the 1960s was based on a design that is more than 50 years old, so today's engineers are looking to create something more flexible based on what we have learned about astronauts and human factors since then.

In 2017, the OIG criticized NASA for spreading its recent spacesuit development among multiple programs, resulting in $200 million spent but leaving the agency "years away from having a flight-ready spacesuit capable of replacing the EMU or suitable for use on future exploration missions." At the time, NASA said the report "is a fair assessment of the current state of Extravehicular Activity (EVA) systems", but said the OIG was "overly critical" of the data and products supplied to explain the Constellation Space Suit System contract, which was terminated some years after the George W. Bush-era Constellation moon-to-Mars program was canceled in 2010. NASA added that some of the CSSS deliverables "may be used to reduce risk for current International Space Station (ISS) EVA systems."

More Photos: NASA's Futuristic Z-2 Spacesuit Design in PicturesRelated: NASA's Z-2 Spacesuit: How It Works (Infographic)

Yet the agency appears to be using multiple spacesuit ideas to inform the design of its newer xEMU.

Aitchison mentioned various spacesuit designs that influenced xEMU, all the way back to the early 1990s. Among the spacesuits she cited were ILC Dover's Mark III used in a NASA field testing program called Desert Research and Technology Studies or Desert RATS and the more recent Z-1 spacesuit and Z-2 spacesuit prototypes that ILC Dover and NASA introduced in the last decade.

"NASA has actually been investing in a very methodical matter how we're going to do exploration spacesuit development," Aitchison said, including implementing "lessons learned" from the ISS program. Among the changes: the xEMU suit will have a smaller display unit on the front of the suit, making it easier to fit a wider range of NASA's astronaut population, Aitchison said.

In March, NASA backed away from plans to run the first all-female spacewalk because there were not enough EMU spacesuits immediately available on the ISS, in the correct size, for the two scheduled astronauts to use. Modifying the Hard Upper Torso unit on the EMU for taller (or shorter) astronauts generally takes about 12 hours of work, so NASA elected to shuffle spacewalk assignments rather than take time away from experiments and more urgent repairs on the ISS. Following this situation, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told the House science committee that future spacesuit designs would better accommodate the range of sizes the astronaut population requires.

Another consideration for xEMU is it will be able to run missions on the future Gateway space station at the moon, as well as for lunar exploration or for landing on Mars, Aitchison said. xEMU's design can be changed to accommodate different missions, she explained, by swapping out some components to keep the astronauts safe in these different environments.

As for ILC Dover, the company (along with Collins Aerospace) introduced an "Astro" suit in August that can be used for floating spacewalks, moon exploration or Mars exploration. The new suit system is aimed at both NASA and commercial space partners for future lunar and Martian exploration.

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

Read the original:
NASA Wants to Test New Moon Spacesuits on the Space Station in 2023 - Space.com

A unpiloted Japanese resupply ship will launch to the International Space Station today (Sept. 24) after a two-week delay due to a launchpad fire and you can watch the liftoff live online.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will launch the unpiloted spacecraft HTV-8 (also known as Kounotori8) toward the space station from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan atop an H-IIB rocket. Liftoff is scheduled for 12:05 p.m. EDT (1605 GMT). It will be 1:05 a.m. Wednesday at the launch site. You can watch the launch live here via NASA TV at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT). JAXA is offering its own webcast here beginning at 11:47 a.m. EDT (1547 GMT).

HTV-8 is hauling more than 4 tons of supplies to the International Space Station for the outpost's six-person crew. JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which built the H-IIB rocket, tried to launch the HTV-8 mission on Sept. 10, but a fire on the launchpad just below the rocket forced them to call off the launch.

Video: How Japan's HTV Cargo Ships WorkRelated: Japan's HTV Space Truck Explained (Infographic)

A Mitsubishi Heavy Industries-built H-IIB rocket carrying the HTV-8 cargo ship for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency stands atop its launchpad at Tanegashima Space Center for a Sept. 24, 2019 launch.

(Image credit: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries)

MHI representatives have said the fire, a first for the company and JAXA, was caused by an unexpected concentration of flammable oxygen vapors at the pad. "We have taken corrective measures and have confirmed normal functioning of the rocket and facility," they said in a statement.

"Launch providerMitsubishi Heavy Industriesidentified the root cause for the fire and set the new launch date after corrective measures were put in place," NASA officials wrote in a statement.

"Named Kounotori, meaning white stork in Japanese, the craft will deliver six new lithium-ion batteries and corresponding adapter plates that will replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for two power channels on the station's far port truss segment," NASA officials said in a statement. "The batteries will be installed through a series of robotics and spacewalks by the stations crew members later this year."

Also riding aboard HTV-8 are a small, experimental satellite optical communication system called SOLIS (designed to allow 100Mbps downlink speeds from the space station), the experiment Hourglass to test the effects of gravity on powder and granular material and an upgrade for the station's Cell Biology Experiment Facility, NASA officials added.

Japan's HTV cargo ships are brilliant gold, cylindrical spacecraft designed for one-time delivery trips to the International Space Station. They launch on JAXA's H-IIB rockets built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, hence their name: H-II Transfer Vehicle, or HTV.Photos: Japan's Robotic Space Cargo Ship Fleet

Each HTV spacecraft includes internal compartment which astronauts can access from inside the station and an external payload area for exterior equipment like the new solar array batteries. At the end of their missions, HTV vehicles are filled with trash and released to intentionally burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

HTV-8 is currently scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station early Saturday (Sept. 28), where it will be captured by astronauts using the orbiting laboratory's robotic arm. The spacecraft will then be attached to an available docking port on the station's Harmony module.

NASA will webcast HTV-8's arrival at the space station on Saturday beginning at 5:45 a.m. EDT (0945 GMT), with robotic arm capture scheduled for 7:15 a.m. EDT (1115 GMT).NASA's webcast will resume at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) on Saturday to cover HTV-8's attachment to the Harmony module.

Email Tariq Malik attmalik@space.comor follow him@tariqjmalik. Follow us@SpacedotcomandFacebook

See the original post here:
Japan Is Launching an Unpiloted Cargo Ship to the Space Station Today. Watch Live - Space.com