Less than two weeks till the Space Access 2019 conference, April 18-20 at the Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley in Fremont California. Our near-final conference program is now available online. Links to each day’s schedule:
Discount Hotel Rooms Available Again at the Marriott
Our SA2019 $130 per night discount Marriott room rate has been extended and is available for bookings through Wednesday April 10th. Rooms are for the moment available at our rates for all nights of the conference, including a very limited number for Wednesday night 4/17. Call (510) 413-3700, hit “1” for Reservations, and mention “Space Access 2019” to get the $130 rate.
(If they are again out of discount Wednesday rooms when you call, you may find an affordable Wednesday 4/17/19 rate nearby at this link.)
And, our Hospitality Space needs your help! We’ve run into local budget problems with putting on our traditional Hospitality spread – Learn How You Can Help!
demonstrate the practicality of high data rate communications on a 3U CubeSat. A phased array of X-band patch antennas will allow for rapid beam steering.
A team of students in the Viterbi School of Engineering have taken one small step toward space and made one big leap for their careers.
Early in March, these students finished building and delivered USC’s third CubeSat satellite, which is about the size of a breadbox. David Barnhart, a research professor in the astronautics department, led the students selected from the Space Engineering Research Center through the year-long building process of the satellite.
The team has successfully delivered the satellite to its customer, Vector Space Systems, a start-up developing satellites and launch vehicles. Vector will use this newly built satellite to test its technology in space and ensure it works before selling it to customers.
Grant McSorley, project manager of the CubeSat project at UPEI, said the group of over 20 undergraduate and graduate students have been designing the satellite since September, and now, they’re putting the final touches on their first set of prototypes.
UPEI’s satellite, called SpudNik-1, will be used for what McSorley calls “precision agriculture” that will capture photos and monitor the state of farm fields across P.E.I.
“The idea is to take photos from space that researchers and farmers can use in order to decide where to apply fertilizer, where to apply water in a more efficient way than they’re doing right now,” McSorley said.
This week’s episode of NASA’s Space to Ground report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** A report on protein crystal experiments aboard the ISS:
Parkinson’s disease affects more than 5 million people on Earth. Research on the International Space Station could provide insight into this chronic neurodegenerative disease and help scientists find ways to treat and prevent it. In this video, NASA astronaut Serena Auñon-Chancellor narrates as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst uses a microscope to examine and photograph the LRRK2 crystals. Learn more about this research: https://go.nasa.gov/2FtsPiY
** Other NASA highlights for the week:
** The latest episode of NASA’s Rocket Range podcast focuses on Developing Technology
NASA has a reputation for creating history changing technology, and much of that technology is available to you right now. One of our secrets to success is that we aren’t developing all of this by ourselves. We’re leveraging industry and students to make innovative leaps.
devoted to the allure of the moon for American painters, whose art has reflected the eternal fascination with our closest celestial body. It is the first major museum examination of the moon as it relates to the story of the American nocturne as it developed from the early 1810s through the late 1960s.
The exhibition features more than 60 works of art, highlighting key painters who depicted the moon, from the early nineteenth-century masterpieces of Thomas Cole, the father of the Hudson River School, who embraced a kind of longing Romanticism that the astronomical body symbolized, to late works by famed illustrator Norman Rockwell, represented by his depictions of a long-held romantic yearning finally fulfilled–America’s triumphant lunar landing in 1969. All of the works in the exhibition underscore how the Romantic idea of the moon held an inexorable pull for artists, and was central to its depiction of landscape, a subject of ongoing engagement at the Museum.
[] “Oscar Florianus Bluemner (American, b. Germany, 1867–1938). Moon Radiance, 1927. Watercolor with gum coating on hot pressed off-white wove paper laid down by the artist to thick wood panel. Karen & Kevin Kennedy Collection. Photograph by Joshua Nefsky.”
[] “George Inness (American, 1825–1894). Winter Moonlight (Christmas Eve), 1866. Oil on canvas. Montclair Art Museum. Museum purchase; Lang Acquisition Fund, 1948 (1948.29).”
I grew up doing artsy crafty things, and as an adult—if I could find spare time—I would paint, do some woodworking, or tinker in the garden. Thankfully, before my first spaceflight, my crew support representative and friend Maryjane Anderson encouraged me to think about how I might spend some of my spare time while living for months in space. Thanks to her, I packed a small watercolor kit, and became the first person to paint a watercolor in space.
When people hear I’ve painted in space, they often comment about how it must have been fun to float in front of a window and paint whatever part of Earth I was looking at. And I agree, that would be great—if we weren’t for the fact that we’re passing over the planet at five miles a second. You literally wouldn’t get the brush to the paper before the thing you’re trying to paint would be out of sight. There’s no plein air painting in space.
Paglen’s collaborators on the project, Nevada Museum of Art, require the go-ahead from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy the artwork. In a statement written during the US governmental shutdown, the museum explained that they were unable to receive the go-ahead from the government department.
Before permission can be granted, a division of the US Air Force must identify each of the 64 satellites. This task has not yet been completed, even though the government is now back up and running.
For some operators, it seems that they were able to get in touch with their satellite at the beginning of the flight when all the satellites were in one big blob and close together in space. But as the probes have spread apart in the last few months, it’s become more difficult to know where to point their communication equipment, since so many identities are still unknown. Some operators have had trouble hearing back from the satellites in recent months.
That seems to be the case for Trevor Paglen’s Orbital Reflector — an art project that’s supposed to deploy a giant reflective balloon capable of being seen from Earth. In January, the team behind the satellite said that they had been in contact with the spacecraft, but that the government shutdown had impacted their ability to deploy the balloon. The website for the project states that the team still doesn’t have accurate orbital data for the satellite. “We are working to resolve these issues and will have more conclusive information to share in the near future,” Amanda Horn, a representative for the Nevada Museum of Art, said in a statement to The Verge.
WorldA sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest:
** Town Hall with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine:
Headquarters hosted an agencywide town hall with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on Monday, April 1, at 1:30 p.m. EDT. NASA HQ employees were invited to join the Administrator in the Webb auditorium for this important discussion on our Moon to Mars plans.