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Post by swamprat on Sept 28, 2019 14:44:45 GMT
Elon Musk to Unveil SpaceX's New Starship Design Tonight. Here's What to Expect By Mike Wall 3 minutes ago Spaceflight
It's time for the annual architecture update!
An artist's illustration of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft separating from its Super Heavy rocket. (Image: © SpaceX)
It's that time again.
Elon Musk will unveil the latest design of SpaceX's Starship Mars-colonization architecture tonight (Sept. 28) during a presentation at the company's South Texas facilities, near the village of Boca Chica.
The talk, which will occur at 8 p.m. EDT (7 p.m. CDT, 0000 GMT), will be streamed live online. You can watch it live here at start time: www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html. You can also watch the livestream directly from SpaceX here: www.spacex.com/webcast.
The billionaire entrepreneur has given such an update every September since 2016. Much has changed since then, including the architecture's name, which shifted from the Interplanetary Transport System to the BFR to the current moniker, Starship and Super Heavy.
Then there's size. Musk said in 2017 that the BFR will stand 348 feet (106 meters) tall. But in the tweaked design he revealed last year, the system had grown to a towering 387 feet (118 m).
The basic design concept has held firm, however: a two-stage system that consists of a passenger-carrying vehicle (Starship in the latest iteration) stacked atop a huge rocket (Super Heavy). Both elements will be fully and rapidly reusable, Musk has said.
Starship and Super Heavy will both be powered by SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engine. The stainless-steel, 100-passenger ship will have six Raptors, whereas the first-stage rocket will boast 35 of the engines.
Or so we think now; we'll have to wait until this evening to hear if those numbers have changed.
Musk will have a nice visual aid at hand during the presentation: the newly assembled Starship Mk1, a three-engine prototype that SpaceX plans to fly for the first time in October. The Mk1, which stands 165 feet (50 m) tall, will first aim for an altitude of 12 miles (20 kilometers) and eventually conduct orbital test flights, Musk has said.
SpaceX is also building a similar vehicle, Starship Mk2, at the company's Florida facilities. The competition between the two construction efforts should end up improving the final Starship design, Musk has said.
The final Starship could take to the skies very soon, if the testing campaign continues to go well. (SpaceX has already retired its first prototype, the stubby, one-engine Starhopper vehicle.) The Starship-Super Heavy duo may start launching communication satellites as early as 2021, SpaceX representatives have said.
And Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has booked a crewed flight around the moon aboard the system, with a target launch date of 2023.
www.space.com/elon-musk-starship-design-update-2019-preview.html
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Post by swamprat on Oct 1, 2019 2:37:51 GMT
Crowded Space Station: There Are 9 People from 4 Different Space Agencies in Orbit Right Now By Doris Elin Urrutia | Sept. 30, 2019 | Spaceflight
It's a bit crowded at the International Space Station right now.
It's a busy week at the International Space Station (ISS). With nine crewmembers currently on board, the orbiting laboratory will be unusually crowded until Thursday (Oct. 3), when three of those crewmembers are scheduled to return to Earth.
While the ISS is usually staffed by three to six astronauts and cosmonauts, there have been nine crewmembers on board the space laboratory since last Wednesday (Sept. 25), when the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft arrived with three new crewmembers. This isn't a permanent set-up; part of the reason there are so many humans in space right now has to do with overlap in crew assignments.
Nine is certainly not the highest number of people ever stationed on the space lab. The record for the largest population on the ISS was set in 2009, when there were 13 people on board. The last time there were nine people on board was in 2015, during NASA astronaut Scott Kelly's "Year in Space" mission.
The International Space Station's nine-person crew of Expedition 60 poses in "space band" shirts in this photo shared by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano (upside down) on Sept. 30, 2019. The shirts say "Kryk Chayky" (Cry of the Seagull in Russian). Pictured are (clockwise from top left) NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Parmitano, NASA astronaut Drew Morgan, Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Skripochka, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Nick Hague, and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, giving a thumbs up as crew commander. (Image credit: ESA/Luca Parmitano via Twitter)
Over the course of the eight days when the space station will be a bit of a tight fit, the newly-arrived trio will get acclimated to their new orbiting home, while three other space flyers will prepare to head back down to Earth.
The new residents are NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, who will spend six months in space as members of Expedition 61, plus a special short-term visitor: the first person from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to fly into space, Hazzaa Ali Almansoori. The three launched on board Russia's Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft last Wednesday (Sept. 25) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan shortly before 7 p.m. local time, and arrived at the space lab about six hours later.
Almansoori's brief visit is part of an intergovernmental contract between the UAE and Roscosmos, according to NASA. Almansoori will return to Earth this Thursday (Oct. 3) on the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft, accompanied by NASA astronaut Nick Hague and ISS commander Alexey Ovchinin, both of whom will have completed more than 200 days in space.
Also on board the ISS right now are the crew of the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft: NASA astronaut Drew Morgan, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov. The three spacemen arrived at the ISS on July 20 and will return to Earth sometime in December or January. Three of the men (Parmitano, Ovchinin and Hague) are celebrating birthdays this week. To celebrate, all nine crewmembers donned "space band" shirts for a photo this week.
Ovchinin, who is currently the commander of Expedition 60, will hand over command of the ISS to Parmitano on Wednesday (Oct. 2), marking the official beginning of Expedition 61. You can watch the change of command ceremony live on Space.com beginning at 9:20 a.m. EDT (1320 GMT), courtesy of NASA TV. Later that night, we'll stream live views of the crew farewells (beginning at 12:20 a.m. EDT on Oct. 3), followed by the Soyuz MS-12 undocking and landing early Thursday morning.
www.space.com/space-station-crowded-nine-crewmembers-expedition-60.html
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Post by swamprat on Oct 2, 2019 14:46:57 GMT
This Is China's New Spacecraft to Take Astronauts to the Moon By Andrew Jones 2 hours ago Spaceflight
The as-yet-unnamed craft could fly early next year.
The crew module (top) and service module of the new Chinese crewed spacecraft.
(Image: © CAST)
China is developing a next-generation spacecraft for human spaceflight that would allow astronauts to travel to the moon and other deep-space destinations.
China became the third country to independently launch astronauts in 2003 when Yang Liwei orbited Earth in the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft. And while the country plans to soon begin constructing a modular space station, China is apparently already looking beyond to eventual missions to the moon — and potentially beyond.
A recent promo video from the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a state-owned spacecraft and satellite manufacturer, has given us the best look yet at the new-generation crewed craft, which is capable of deep-space travel.
The new spacecraft will be capable of transporting four to five astronauts.
(Image credit: CAST)
The two-module spacecraft consists of a crew module and a service module, which will provide propulsion, power and life support for the crew section. The spacecraft is up to 30 feet (9 meters) long and has a maximum mass at liftoff of around 22 tons (20 metric tons).
The crew module will be partially reusable, while the spacecraft as a whole features a modular design that will allow it to be constructed to meet different mission demands.
China currently uses the 8.6-ton (7.8 metric tons) Shenzhou spacecraft, which can carry three astronauts to low Earth orbit (LEO). However, Shenzhou is not designed for the harsh radiation environment of deep space, nor can it survive the high-velocity reentry into Earth's atmosphere that such missions must endure.
The new spacecraft, which has not yet been named, will be capable of venturing beyond LEO and carrying four to six astronauts.
China Academy of Space Technology team members in front of the new crewed spacecraft. (Image credit: CAST)
In 2016, China launched a scaled, boilerplate version of the crew module to test reentry and landing.
"These capabilities tell us that China is committed to long-term human spaceflight at a slow but consistent pace," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
It is the opinion of Johnson-Freese that, "what the US did as The Hare — fast, but sporadic — China is now doing as The Tortoise, slow and methodically."
Johnson-Freese also noted that the U.S. has some very exciting programs in varying stages of development and with varying levels of budget commitments, which will enable significant exploration feats if they reach fruition.
NASA is developing the expendable Orion spacecraft for deep-space travel, with a Europe-built service module, which will be the main crew vehicle for the Artemis luna-exploration program.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is working on Starship, a fully reusable launch system designed to help humanity colonize Mars.
The new Chinese spacecraft is expected to make an uncrewed test flight in the first half of 2020, on the first launch of the Long March 5B heavy-lift rocket, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). That schedule depends, however, upon the return to flight of the Long March 5.
The Long March 5B has also been designed to launch the 22-ton (20 metric tons) modules for China's planned station in LEO. If the test flight goes well, China can then begin constructing its space station with the launch of the core module Tianhe, likely in 2021.
Li Ming, vice president of CAST, told SpaceNews last year that, following demonstrations, the new spacecraft can be brought into use quickly and can even be used for flights to the Chinese space station.
"The new generation has reusable abilities … so the government can reduce the cost to fly to the space station," Li explained.
Chinese space officials have stated that the country is looking to carry out crewed missions to the moon in the 2030s. Though such a project has not been approved, early development is underway for a superheavy-lift rocket, the Long March 9, similar in capabilities to NASA's Saturn V or the American space agency's in-development Space Launch System.
www.space.com/china-new-spacecraft-crewed-moon-missions.html
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Post by swamprat on Oct 3, 2019 2:33:45 GMT
SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Will Launch Private Moon Lander in 2021 By Mike Wall 5 hours ago Spaceflight
Intuitive Machines' Nova-C may be the first private spacecraft to soft-land on the moon.
Artist's illustration of Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lunar lander on the moon. (Image: © Intuitive Machines)
A private lunar lander now has a rocket ride for its first moon mission.
The robotic Nova-C lander, built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a NASA-sponsored flight in 2021, representatives of both companies announced today (Oct. 2).
"We're honored that Intuitive Machines selected Falcon 9, SpaceX’s tried-and-true workhorse, for this pioneering mission to the moon," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement. "Our partnership with Intuitive Machines is a great example of two private companies working together with NASA to advance space exploration."
In May of this year, NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program tapped Intuitive Machines and two other companies, Orbit Beyond and Astrobotic, to build landers to take agency payloads to the lunar surface. Intuitive Machines got $77 million, Astrobotic received $79.5 million, and Orbit Beyond netted $97 million.
NASA sees these deals as providing cost-effective ways to learn more about the moon and demonstrate technologies that could help people explore Earth's nearest neighbor. These are key near-term priorities for the space agency, which plans to put two astronauts down near the lunar south pole by 2024 and build up a sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028, all as part of an ambitious program known as Artemis.
Nova-C can carry at least 220 lbs. (100 kilograms) of cargo to any spot on the lunar surface, Intuitive Machines representatives said. On the upcoming mission, which is targeted for liftoff in July 2021, the lander will tote five NASA CLPS payloads and will beam data home for 13.5 Earth days.
The company will add some payloads from other customers to fill out the Nova-C's cargo manifest, Intuitive Machines representatives said.
Astrobotic plans to launch its Peregrine lander at about the same time that Nova-C takes flight for the first time. But Peregrine will fly on a different rocket, United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur, which is still in development. The 2021 Peregrine mission will be the first for both the lander and its launch vehicle.
New Jersey-based Orbit Beyond had been planning to launch its Z-01 lander in September 2020. But in July, NASA announced that the company had backed out of its CLPS deal because it would not be able to meet the ambitious timeline.
www.space.com/intuitive-machines-moon-lander-spacex-2021.html
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Post by swamprat on Oct 6, 2019 15:52:13 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2019 17:31:04 GMT
That was cool ! There's a spacewalk happening above your head right now Swampy. Wave ! Lol. www.n2yo.com/?s=25544
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Post by swamprat on Oct 15, 2019 21:01:31 GMT
About time.....NASA Moves Up 1st All-Female Spacewalk to This Week By Mike Wall | Oct. 15 | Spaceflight The milestone is long overdue.
Astronauts Christina Koch (left) and Jessica Meir are scheduled to spacewalk together on Oct. 17 or Oct. 18, 2019. (Image: © NASA)
We won't have to wait quite as long as we'd thought for the first all-female spacewalk, if all goes according to plan.
NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir had been scheduled to venture outside the International Space Station (ISS) together next Monday (Oct. 21), as part of a series of excursions to install new batteries. But they've been retasked and fast-tracked, thanks to the failure of one of the orbiting lab's power controllers over the weekend, NASA officials announced today (Oct. 15).
"@space_Station update: our first all-female spacewalk with @astro_Christina and @astro_Jessica will be Thursday or Friday to replace a faulty battery charge-discharge unit," NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said via Twitter. "More details will be relayed during a press conference later today," he added.
Just 15 women have ever conducted a spacewalk, and all of them did so with a male companion. So Koch and Meir will make some long-overdue history.
And speaking of overdue: The all-female milestone was originally scheduled for March, and was to involve Koch and NASA astronaut Anne McClain. But that spacewalk was scuttled because properly fitted spacesuits could not be readied in time for both astronauts.
McClain, who came back to Earth in June, had kind words for Koch, Meir and their colleagues aboard the orbiting lab.
"Third spacewalk in a busy season of spacewalks this week. Date is unknown bccause the task was unforeseen: replacing a unit that failed during power-ups of new batteries. Very good that we have 4 expert spacewalkers on board to shoulder this tough task. They are the A-team!" McClain said via Twitter today.
Six people are serving on the space station's current Expedition 61: Koch, Meir, and fellow NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan; Russian cosmonauts Aleksandr Skvortsov and Oleg Skripochka; and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano, who commands the mission.
www.space.com/first-all-female-spacewalk-date-moved-up.html
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Post by swamprat on Oct 16, 2019 0:58:08 GMT
These stats are about a year old. It's further out there now.....
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2019 13:53:20 GMT
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Post by swamprat on Oct 19, 2019 0:21:03 GMT
NASA scientist creates engine concept that can reach 'close to the speed of light' By Chris Ciaccia | Fox News | October 16, 2019
A NASA scientist has created a new concept for an engine that he says can move "close to the speed of light" – all without any moving parts or need for fuel.
The paper, written by David Burns from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, discusses a "helical engine" that can be used to travel across interstellar distances, send astronauts to the moon in approximately one second and Mars in less than 13 minutes, according to The Sun, which first reported the news.
"A new concept for in-space propulsion is proposed in which propellant is not ejected from the engine, but instead is captured to create a nearly infinite specific impulse," Burns wrote in the paper's abstract. "The engine accelerates ions confined in a loop to moderate relativistic speeds, and then varies their velocity to make slight changes to their mass. The engine then moves ions back and forth along the direction of travel to produce thrust. This in-space engine could be used for long-term satellite station-keeping without refueling."
"It could also propel spacecraft across interstellar distances, reaching close to the speed of light," Burns added in the abstract. "The engine has no moving parts other than ions traveling in a vacuum line, trapped inside electric and magnetic fields."
Burns' idea is novel, as it completely removes one of the heaviest components of space flight--fuel.
NASA is looking into the possibility of using ice and water on the surface of the moon as rocket fuel, but any potential solution would likely be years, if not decades, away.
The concept, which Burns admitted he is not sure is viable, takes inspiration from high-tech particle accelerators, similar to what is seen at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
"If someone says it doesn't work, I'll be the first to say, it was worth a shot," Burns said in an interview with New Scientist. "You have to be prepared to be embarrassed. It is very difficult to invent something that is new under the sun and actually works."
www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-creates-engine-concept-speed-of-light?fbclid=IwAR015inlAhBKOJN46cpzr24KC-7OMeA6i8UcqI-HpxBOTaQu3rzeWgNEVvE
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Post by swamprat on Nov 6, 2019 15:16:07 GMT
SpaceX's Starship May Fly for Just $2 Million Per Mission, Elon Musk Says By Mike Wall | Nov. 6, 2019 | Spaceflight
The big spaceship-rocket duo will use just $900,000 of fuel per launch.
SAN FRANCISCO — Each flight of SpaceX's big Mars-colonizing spacecraft will have a very small price tag, if all goes according to plan.
The Starship system, which consists of a reusable 100-passenger spaceship stacked atop a huge reusable rocket known as Super Heavy, will use just $900,000 worth of propellant to get off Earth and into orbit, Elon Musk said here today (Nov. 5) at the first U.S. Air Force Space Pitch Day.
"If you consider operational costs, maybe it'll be like $2 million" out of SpaceX's pocket each time, Musk said during a conversation with Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, Air Force Space Command, at Los Angeles Air Force Base.
"This is much less than even a tiny rocket," Musk added. "So, it's something that needs to be made."
During Space Pitch Day (which should be called Space Pitch Days, since it runs through tomorrow), companies try to sell Air Force brass on their space-related ideas. In keeping with this focus, Thompson mostly asked Musk about business stuff — how to spur innovation, how management and leadership styles shift as a company grows, and so on.
This may sound relatively dry to space geeks, but Musk injected some fun nuggets into the conversation. For example, the billionaire entrepreneur said he does "zero market research whatsoever," striving instead to create the Platonic ideal of a rocket or car. (Musk is also CEO of electric-vehicle maker Tesla.)
If he pulls that off, then "people will want to buy it," Musk said.
The Starship MK1 assembled at SpaceX's build and launch facility in Texas. (Image credit: SpaceX)
He also hyped Tesla's new pickup truck, saying that "it looks like an armored personnel carrier from the future," and announced that he had just finished watching the 1996 movie "Space Jam" (serially, during 15- to 20-minute morning workout stints on the treadmill).
Musk demurred when Thompson asked about his leadership qualities, saying he doesn't consider himself an expert on leadership. Thompson urged Musk not to "sell himself short" in this regard, teeing up a self-deprecating joke that the billionaire jumped on.
"That's true. There's plenty of others doing that," Musk said, referring to investors who are betting on the stock price of his companies (particularly Tesla) to fall.
Toward the end of the 40-minute conversation, Thompson gave Musk the floor to say anything he wanted to the audience of investors, engineers, entrepreneurs and military officials. The SpaceX founder and CEO took the opportunity to talk about something near and dear to his heart: the importance of fully and rapidly reusable orbital rockets.
This is the technological advance that will slash the cost of spaceflight by orders of magnitude, allowing humanity to become a truly spacefaring species, Musk has said repeatedly over the years.
"It's absolutely profound to have a reusable rocket," he said here today. "This is the holy grail."
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk chats with Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Air Force Space Command's Space and Missile Systems Center, which is based at Los Angeles Air Force Base. The conversation took place in San Francisco on Nov. 5, 2019, at the U.S. Air Force's first Space Pitch Day. (Image credit: MIke Wall/Space.com)
SpaceX has been working to make this vision a reality, and the company has made considerable progress. SpaceX now routinely lands and reflies the first stages of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, and it's doing the same with the heavy-lift Falcon Heavy, which has three launches under its belt. The company is now also starting to recover and refly payload fairings, the protective nose cones that surround satellites during launch. (There is still work to do, however; for example, the second stage of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy is still single-use hardware.)
Starship and Super Heavy fit well into this grand vision. Both vehicles (the spaceship, like the overall architecture, is known as Starship) will be fully reusable, and each individual craft will fly many times before it's retired, Musk has said.
These missions will be quite varied. Starship and Super Heavy are designed primarily to help humanity settle Mars, the moon and other deep-space destinations, but SpaceX wants the duo to take over all of the company's needs eventually. So, if all goes according to plan, Starship will also launch satellites (perhaps starting as early as 2021) and maybe even clean up space junk and ferry people on point-to-point trips around Earth, Musk has said.
Being able to do all of this for $2 million a pop would be revolutionary. That would be the cost of each mission for SpaceX, to be clear; we don't yet know how much the company will charge customers for a Starship mission (or "is charging," for Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has already booked a round-the-moon flight on the vehicle, with a target launch date of 2023).
But, for some perspective, SpaceX currently sells Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches for $62 million and $90 million, respectively. And those prices are considerably lower than similar services offered by SpaceX's competitors.
www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-passenger-cost-elon-musk.html
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Post by swamprat on Nov 23, 2019 16:40:44 GMT
Better cancel that trip to Proxima Centauri.....We've Found a Serious New Health Risk to Human Spaceflight David Nield
17 Nov 2019
We're still learning about the potential effect that extended periods spent in space could have on the human body. Now a new health threat has been identified, one which could put lives at risk on long journeys through the cosmos.
The problem lies in the internal jugular vein (IJV), a major blood vessel running down the neck from the brain. A study of 11 astronauts who spent time on the International Space Station (ISS) found that six of them had developed stagnant or backwards blood flow in this particular vein, within a period of just 50 days.
One crew member was found to have developed thrombosis, or blockage in the internal jugular vein, the first time that this has been recorded as a result of spaceflight.
According to the team behind the new findings, this issue needs to be investigated before we start sending astronauts on long trips to Mars. It's not yet clear just what the consequences of this kind of thrombosis might be, but the implications could be severe and perhaps even fatal.
"Exposure to a weightless environment during spaceflight results in a chronic headward blood and tissue fluid shift compared with the upright posture on Earth, with unknown consequences to cerebral venous outflow," write the researchers in their published paper.
Down here on Earth of course, gravity takes care of the job of pulling blood down from the head to the rest of the body – it's one of the reasons you'd start feeling very strange if you stood on your hands for an extended period of time.
Up in the microgravity environment of the ISS, it's a different story – and bloodflow issues aren't the only health risks we need to worry about.
"Headward fluid shifts during prolonged weightlessness result in facial puffiness, decreased leg volume, increased stroke volume, and decreased plasma volume," write the researchers.
Medical experts used readings and images gathered on board the ISS to identify the potential issue with the IJV, while the astronaut who developed an occlusive thrombus was treated with anticoagulants for the remainder of the mission (the identities of the astronauts are being kept back for privacy reasons).
More research is needed to work out how big of a problem this actually is, and how we might mitigate against it in future spaceflights; but the high number of astronauts who developed some kind of blood flow issue is worrying.
We already know that time in space can reduce bone density, change the make-up of our gut bacteria, and put a squeeze on our brains. At least we're working to discover these effects before we try to get farther than the Moon, so there's a better chance of developing potential solutions.
"[These] are novel findings that may have significant human health implications for civilian spaceflight as well as future exploration-class missions, such as a mission to Mars," conclude the researchers.
The research has been published in the JAMA Network Open.
www.sciencealert.com/we-ve-found-a-serious-new-health-risk-to-spaceflight-that-could-make-a-mars-trip-risky?fbclid=IwAR17UJMuYtEwQIdF8kap7MNOmeic4tY14Ju9mYK2JuAWmz8h-QPTh_LfgsM
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Post by swamprat on Mar 23, 2020 1:58:41 GMT
NASA pauses work on James Webb Space Telescope due to coronavirus, weighs risk to other science missions By Meghan Bartels 12 hours ago
No mission will be immune, NASA leadership said, not even the James Webb Space Telescope or the Perseverance Mars rover.
As many NASA centers switch to mandatory telework to confront the spread of COVID-19, NASA leadership acknowledged that prized science missions may suffer delays and that the agency was prepared to make that trade in order to keep its employees safe.
Among the missions affected is the James Webb Space Telescope, where work is now on hold, NASA officials said Friday (March 20).
Questions about NASA's response to the coronavirus pandemic reigned during a Science Mission Directorate digital town hall held on Friday. The event had been arranged to allow Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen and several division leaders to summarize and address questions about President Donald Trump's budget request for the 2021 fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1. As it turned out, that discussion took second place on the agenda.
"What we're going to do in this call is use what I call the elephant principle: If there's an elephant in the room, we'll talk about it," Zurbuchen said during his opening remarks. "We're going to talk about COVID activities and how it affects us here in science. And then, as we do all day, we will go back to business."
Zurbuchen noted that different types of activities will be affected differently by the telework guidelines. Some work, like developing the requirements that missions must meet to be considered successful, is straightforward to do remotely; constructing a spacecraft is not. He noted that aircraft-based science flights have already been postponed indefinitely, although he emphasized that those flights are not canceled and will be rescheduled when the pandemic is more contained.
Even NASA's most prized missions currently in development could see serious impacts from COVID-19 containment measures, Zurbuchen said. "Many people have asked us about James Webb," he said, referring to the agency's over-budget and much-delayed massive space telescope project.
That spacecraft is currently scheduled to launch next March, although a January report from the Government Accountability Office suggested that the project had just a 12% chance of meeting that timeline, even without the pandemic. "Of course it will be impacted, even though it's one of our top priorities, as we've said repeatedly; personnel for integration and testing work has been reduced already," Zurbuchen said.
Just hours after the town hall concluded, NASA announced that it was pausing — at least temporarily — work on the Webb space telescope. The instrument is currently in California, the governor of which on Thursday (March 19) instituted mandatory restrictions keeping his residents in their homes for the foreseeable future except for essential errands.
The coronavirus containment measures could also interfere with NASA's next Mars mission, which is scheduled to launch in July and includes the Perseverance rover and an experimental helicopter. The main spacecraft is already in Florida, but prelaunch assembly is not yet completed and the rover's power supply has not yet arrived. "Mars 2020 is another top priority, and the teams are doing frankly heros' work to keep us on track," Zurbuchen said. "Both missions are priorities but they're very different as far as their situation and decisions that need to be made."
Beyond those two missions, Zurbuchen avoided discussing the impacts coronavirus response measures may have on specific projects, instead emphasizing that NASA decisions would respond to the pandemic as needed. "We're in a state of flux," he said. "This remains fluid."
During his remarks, he also strove to emphasize that NASA's focus was on meeting the needs of its personnel's physical and mental well-being. Zurbuchen acknowledged that some NASA staff will be dealing with other complications, like taking care of children home from school or getting back to family they have been working away from, and that the situation is continuing to change.
He also directed a few encouragements specifically to graduate students and other early-career professionals. "We do not want this to be a kind of a fork in the road career-wise, a fork in the road for you that is imposed from the outside," he said. "We're all together on this and committed to coming out the other side as a stronger community and one that is not weeding out our friends that we really need to lead in the future."
The unspoken question underlying his remarks, of course, was what that future might look like. "We're all affected by this, all of our missions are affected by this," Zurbuchen said. "Most of the missions, there's nobody working hands-on anymore at NASA facilities."
www.space.com/coronavirus-impact-on-nasa-science-missions.html
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Post by swamprat on Apr 2, 2020 15:38:35 GMT
SpaceX claims some success in darkening Starlink satellites by Jeff Foust — March 18, 2020
SpaceX says that an experimental Starlink satellite has demonstrated a "notable reduction" in its brightness, but that may not be enough to assuage astronomers concerned the constellation could adversely affect their observations. Credit: Victoria Girgis/Lowell Observatory
WASHINGTON — SpaceX says it will take more steps to reduce the impact of its Starlink satellite constellation on astronomy, although astronomers disagree with statements by Elon Musk that the system will have “zero” effect on their work.
SpaceX launched its latest set of Starlink satellites March 18, the fourth such launch this year and sixth overall. The company has placed 362 Starlink satellites into orbit, counting two experimental satellites launched in 2018, and nearly all of them remain in orbit.
Since large-scale Starlink launches started in May 2019, astronomers have warned that the satellites, far brighter than expected, could interfere with their observations, particularly if SpaceX proceeds with plans to launch 12,000 or more such satellites in the next several years. In response to those concerns, SpaceX included an experimental “DarkSat” among the 60 Starlink satellites launched Jan. 6, with portions of the satellite darkened to reduce its reflectivity and hence brightness.
During the company’s webcast of the latest Starlink launch, SpaceX claimed some success with that effort. “Preliminary results show a notable reduction,” said Jessica Anderson, one of the hosts of the webcast. She added that the company had “a couple of other ideas that we think could reduce the reflectivity even further.”
One of those, she said, was a “sunshade” that would deploy like a patio umbrella from the satellite. That will be tested on a future Starlink mission, but she didn’t give more details about either the sunshade itself or when it would be flown.
SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk also mentioned the sunshade option during an onstage interview at the Satellite 2020 conference here March 9. “We are working with senior members of the science community and senior astronomers to minimize the potential for reflection from the satellites,” he said. “We’re running a bunch of experiments.” That includes a sunshade and other steps “to minimize the potential for any impact.”
However, the company’s claim that DarkSat has achieved a “notable reduction” in brightness is not necessarily supported by recent observations. In a paper posted to the online preprint server arXiv March 17, astronomers using a small telescope in Chile measured the brightness of DarkSat and compared it to another Starlink satellite without darkening treatments. They found DarkSat was about 0.88 magnitudes, or 55%, dimmer than the ordinary Starlink satellite.
That falls far short of what many astronomers are seeking. In a March 11 panel discussion organized by the American Astronomical Society, Tony Tyson, chief scientist for the Vera Rubin Observatory under construction in Chile, said that simulations of the Starlink satellites showed that not only would the satellites make bright streaks on images taken by the telescope, but create other image artifacts by saturating pixels in the detector.
“If we could make those particular spacecraft, the Starlinks, darker by 10 to 20 times, it may remove many of these artifacts,” he said. “It won’t remove the main trail — it will always be there — but it would remove the artifacts so that we might be able to get the science out of the data.”
At the time of that event, there was still little information available about how much dimmer DarkSat was than the rest of the Starlink constellation. While launched in early January, the spacecraft reached its operational orbit only in late February, allowing for accurate comparisons of its brightness.
“This is a continuing experiment,” Tyson said of the DarkSat observations, noting that measurements of its brightness were taken just the night before. The data from the small Chilean telescope analyzed in the arXiv preprint came primarily from a single night of observations in early March after DarkSat reached its operational orbit.
Tyson, though, emphasized the cooperation between SpaceX and the astronomy community to reduce the brightness of future Starlink satellites. “We’ve had a really delightful collaboration going now for a couple months with SpaceX engineers,” he said. “There are a lot of ideas on the table for darkening their satellites. This is just the first.”
Musk, in his Satellite 2020 appearance, claimed that the Starlink constellation will ultimately have no effect on ground-based astronomy. “I am confident that we not cause any impact whatsoever in astronomical discoveries,” he said. “Zero. That’s my prediction. We will take corrective action if it’s above zero.”
Astronomers like Tyson, though, would not go so far to say that Starlink will have “zero” effect on their observations. “My hope in the future is that they will be darkened sufficiently, just as I mentioned, just to get out of this region where our detectors are impacted very negatively,” he said. “The trail will always be there, of course, but maybe we can salvage some of the science.”
spacenews.com/spacex-claims-some-success-in-darkening-starlink-satellites/
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Post by HAL on Apr 2, 2020 16:52:58 GMT
...send astronauts to the moon in approximately one second and Mars in less than 13 minutes,..
And what happens to the people on the ship when subject to the gravitational forces involved ?
HAL.
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