Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Christina Koch’s Memorable Moments: Part 1
NASA astronaut Christina Koch’s record for the longest single spaceflight ever by a female astronaut or cosmonaut has reached a new milestone: today, it’s been 300 days (and still counting) since her launch on March 14, 2019! She’s racked up quite a few favorite moments so far—check out two of her most memorable.
** Down to Earth – Out of the Bubble
As we continue to celebrate the space station 20th anniversary, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg shares what it was like to see the Earth from above during her two spaceflights in this episode of “Down to Earth – Out of the Bubble.” As she describes it, she experienced a shift in her worldview known as “the Overview Effect,” a term coined by space philosopher Frank White.
It has been a busy year of science aboard the International Space Station. In November, we kicked off the 20th year of continuous human presence aboard the space station, which so far has hosted 239 people and more than 2,700 science experiments. During the past year, research has ranged from growing leafy greens in microgravity to analyzing mining microbes to testing out autonomous robots. This research is benefiting people on Earth while helping prepare us to go forward to the Moon in 2024, and then on to Mars. Learn more: https://go.nasa.gov/36pXycY Learn more about the research being conducted on Station: https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science
Fabricating new tissue: “NASA astronaut Christina Koch activates the BioFabrication Facility (BFF) to test its ability to print organ-like tissues in space. Scientists and medical professionals have long dreamed of using 3D biological printers to produce usable human organs. But printing the tiny, complex structures found inside human organs has proven difficult in Earth’s gravity. The BFF allows researchers to explore whether the microgravity environment of space may support the fabrication of human organs in space.” Credits: NASA
January 9, 2020 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and Blue Origin have partnered to create Design/Build/Launch (DBL), a new competition designed to launch experimental payloads to study the effects of short-duration microgravity.
A fully reusable New Shepard rocket lifts off for a suborbital trip to space. Credits: Blue Origin
AIAA and Blue Origin invite high school students to develop creative research proposals in the fields of microgravity science or space technology and pair the experiment with a public outreach plan to share the excitement of space with others. The top proposal will be launched on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and receive a $1,000 grant to prepare and develop the experiment for flight.
“There’s no better way to learn than by doing,” said Dan Dumbacher, AIAA executive director. “These students have an amazing opportunity to contribute to space research while learning how transformative aerospace can be while gaining the skills that will serve them well throughout their careers!”
AIAA and Blue Origin representatives will judge the submitted proposals on the basis of scientific/technical merit, outreach creativity, and feasibility. The winning payload is expected to fly on New Shepard in 2021. Postflight, the students will be recognized and have the opportunity to deliver their final report at ASCEND, an AIAA event dedicated to the space economy.
“Blue Origin is passionate about the future of living and working in space. Through payloads on our reusable New Shepard vehicle and our non-profit, Club for the Future, we are inspiring students to pursue careers in STEM and inviting them to visualize their own possibilities in space,” said Dr. Erika Wagner, payload sales director for Blue Origin.
Timeline:
Proposals Due
3 April 2020
Announcement of Winning Team
22 May 2020
Experiment Flies
2021
Final Report Presentation at ASCEND
November 2021
Who can enter?
All active high school students, between 9th and 12th grade (or equivalent homeschooling levels) at the time of their submission. Multiple students may collaborate on a single proposal, and a lead faculty advisor must be named to receive the payload development award. The competition is open to both U.S. and international students. Please see aiaa.org/dbl for more information.
About Blue Origin: For information on Blue Origin, visit www.blueorigin.com and follow @BlueOrigin on Twitter and Instagram. To learn more about Club for the Future and our space mail program, visit clubforfuture.org and follow @ClubForFuture on Twitter and Instagram.
About AIAA: The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 85 countries, and 95 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, www.aiaa.org, or follow us on Twitter @AIAA.
About ASCEND: A new event by AIAA, ASCEND is designed to drive the $1 trillion space economy forward, bringing together technical and business leaders to solve problems that affect the entire planet and beyond. The international forum also is convening traditional and nontraditional players to help build the space economy. ASCEND’s inaugural event is 16–18 November 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. For more information, please visit https://www.ascend.events/, or follow us on Twitter @ascendspace.
A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest (find previous space policy roundups here):
A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport (find previous roundups here):
** SpaceX successfully launches 60 more Starlink satellites: The Falcon 9 with the second batch of operational Starlink satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Monday night and an hour later the upper stage released them into orbit. The first stage successfully landed but a fairing half-shell was not caught in a net as hoped. Fairings lifted out of the water, however, have been reused a couple of times so far.
Falcon 9 first stage has landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship – SpaceX’s 48th successful landing of an orbital class rocket booster pic.twitter.com/wLal1xfsjO
Falcon 9 streaks to orbit from Cape Canaveral at 9:19pm this evening, launching 60 additional #Starlink satellites as a part of #SpaceX’s mission to provide fast, reliable internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable. pic.twitter.com/DX3DKGNv76
We named this building the O’Neill Building after Gerard O’Neill, a physicist who envisioned millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. Gerard O’Neill was one of the visionaries who thought about how we go out into space in a quick and sustainable way so that we can preserve our planet.
For those of you that are Washington State residents, what is exciting is we’re going to be doing all this work from a headquarters based here in Kent. It’s a remarkable statement to say that we’re going to fly humans to space, we’re going to build and design large engines and a large orbital rocket, and we’re going to go back to the Moon – all through work centered here.
We’re excited to continue to see this growth in this new facility. We broke ground on this facility in January of 2019 and it came up in just 11 months. It houses approximately 1500 people. The building sits on a 30-acre plot of land, and we’re using 13 of those acres for a wildlife habitat and flood storage, as well as protecting against invasive species. This is a very sustainable building with better insulation and better energy consumption than a traditional building. And it all came together very quickly.
This couldn’t have been done without our great partners. Thanks to Sprung Instant Structures, our architect Nelson, our general contractor Sierra Construction, civil engineering group Barghausen Consulting Engineers and our environmental consultants Soundview Consultants.
Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told GeekWire that the new HQ was required because “we’re growing like crazy.”
“We’ve grown a third in just the past year,” Smith said during an interview on the mezzanine of the U-shaped building. “So we’re now north of 2,500 people here.”
The new structure, built on a 30.7-acre site that the company purchased a little more than two years ago for $14 million, is built to accommodate 1,500 of those employees. Hundreds more are based elsewhere in the Kent area, south of Seattle, as well as at Blue Origin’s suborbital launch site in West Texas, the Florida rocket factory where Blue Origin’s New Glenn orbital-class rocket will be assembled, and at the site of its future BE-4 rocket engine factory in Alabama.
While Truax’s concept was at the extreme, there is in fact a big advantage in big rockets: the margins can be big.
Conventional rockets are notoriously sensitive to small shortcomings in the performance of the engines and other systems and structures. However, to get payloads of useful size into orbit, rocket designers must necessarily push those components to their limits, aiming for maximum performance at minimum mass. This results in reliability and safety issues. With a giant rocket, some percentage of the giant payload can be sacrificed to obtain highly reliable systems and robust structures while still getting lots of payload to orbit.
We see signs of this approach in the huge SpaceX Starships. Multiple Raptor engines will provide enough performance to allow for wide margins in component systems and structures. They can be built like ocean liners out in the open in shipyard-like environments rather than like fine watches built in tightly confined workshops.
In 2019, American companies reached crucial milestones on the path towards launching small satellites. Firefly Aerospace and Virgin Orbit both secured partnerships and accomplished test objectives ahead of their respective rockets’ first flights this year. Concurrently, Rocket Lab improved its launch cadence and began evolving their Electron rocket as they look towards expanding their capabilities in 2020.
After the successful return to flight of the powerful Long March 5 closing the orbital launch activities for China in 2019, the country launched another secretive Tongxin Jishu Shiyan Weixing (TJSW) satellite on January 7, opening what could be a record-breaking year. The launch took place at around 15:20 UTC using the Long March 3B/G2 (Y64) ‘Chang Zheng-3B/G2’ launch vehicle from the LC2 launch complex of the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
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As with the previous launch of Communications Engineering Test Satellites, there is very little information regarding the new satellite.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than Saturday, Jan. 18, for an In-Flight Abort Test of the Crew Dragon spacecraft from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, pending U.S. Air Force Eastern Range approval. The new date allows additional time for spacecraft processing.
The demonstration of Crew Dragon’s in-flight launch escape system is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and is one of the final major tests for the company before NASA astronauts will fly aboard the spacecraft.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft for the In-Flight Abort (IFA) test. Credits: NASA
Vern Estes founded his namesake model rocket company, and helped start the National Association of Rocketry. Many areospace professionals started with launching Estes rockets as a first step along the road to their helping launch Falcon, Delta, Titan, and Space Shuttle etc.
As Vern’s 90th birthday was January 4, 2020, it would be fitting to have one of the first experimental Starships named after him, especially since he is still able to enjoy the honor.
****** SpaceX Boca Chica – Starship Bulkhead/Dome Flipped/Installed on Stand [Jan.7.2020] – NASASpaceflight
Starship development: The first dome/bulkhead was lifted, flipped and installed on to the stand/rig as the team prepares to build what we believe will be a Starship tank for a tanking test. Footage and photos from Mary (@bocachicagal) for NSF (Many thanks to her for spending all night filming this). Several hours timelapsed.
****** SpaceX Boca Chica – Preparing for Tank Testing – Jan 6, 2020 – NASASpaceflight
Work continues on Starship SN1’s domes as the RollLift arrives, likely to transport the soon-to-be-assembled domes/rings for a tanking test (per road closures). Footage and photos from Mary (@bocachicagal) for NSF.
After successfully delivering Starship hardware and manufacturing tools to SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas rocket factory and launch facilities, the company has begun preparing a second load of parts to be shipped from Florida to Texas in the near future.
This is the latest chapter in a saga that began when SpaceX revealed that it would effectively pause its Florida Starship manufacturing operations and reassign most of its affected employees. Since SpaceX’s early-December confirmation, the company’s Cocoa, Florida Starship production hub has been more or less at a standstill, only interrupted once and awhile by efforts to either scrap hardware that is no longer needed or send it to Texas, where SpaceX has redoubled efforts to build the next series of Starship prototypes.
When a tiny space probe hurtled past Pluto in 2015, no one could know that its most amazing discovery would remain hidden for years. Only when a long-lost Soyuz is destroyed in the skies above Siberia does the truth begin to emerge.
About to embark on NASA’s first expedition to the outer planets, the crew of the spacecraft Magellan learns someone else has beaten them by a few decades: a top-secret Soviet project codenamed Arkangel. It was a mission that began before most of them were even born, and the Kremlin believes it drove their most trusted crew mad.
During their long race to the Kuiper Belt, astronauts Jack Templeton and Traci Keene unwind a decades-old mystery buried in the pages of a dead cosmonaut’s journal. Challenging their own beliefs about the nature of humanity, they will soon confront the question of existence itself.
Check out also Patrick’s other novels, Farside and Perigee.
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