DIY space, Education, Space participation

SpaceUnited – a humanitarian space agency

April 2, 2014 TopSpacer

David Livingston recently interview Adam Brinckerhoff about the SpaceUnited project: Adam Brinckerhoff, Friday, 3-28-14 – Thespaceshow’s Blog

SpaceUnited is described as “your nonprofit humanitarian space agency. Explore for good.” They define a “humanitarian space agency” as follows:

It’s a organization that helps people on Earth and beyond through the use of space technologies. Today, this help comes in the form of satellite imagery, improved housing, life-support systems, and science and education programs. Tomorrow it could mean interstellar Internet access; Mars and Moon aid; or a million other things.

Their primary goals currently appeared to be implementing Humanitarian Space Missions. Here are three current missions –

ExploraLab – Would you like to send something to the stratosphere? ExploraLab is your rocket-shaped experiment payload carrier. Simply create an experiment, put it into an ExploraLab, and drop it in the mail. We’ll make sure that it flies high and then gets delivered back to you!

SHIM-1 – SHIM-1 is a mission about saving lives. We’re working to purchase real-time satellite photos for humanitarian efforts, such as emergency relief organizations and international human rights watchdogs. Discover how you can help.

HOME-1 – HOME stands for Human Optimized Modular Environment. The mission of the HOME program is to improve human life by improving housing. We’re working on building HOMEs for on and off-Earth use. Check out this awesome project.

Two completed missions are BalloonSat-1 and BalloonSat-2.

You can follow their activities and progress at the SpaceUnited Blog. Also, SpaceUnited executives Troy Dunn and Adam Brinckerhoff present Google+ Hangouts every Tuesday at 11:30 AM MT in which they

discuss the humanitarian space exploration topic of the week, interview a guest, and answer your questions live!”

Here is a recent Hangout in which they discussed “How To Do Space Exploration Yourself” : SpaceUnited Hangout 3-18-14 – SpaceUnited –

Space Policy

Space policy roundup – April.2.14 [Update]

April 2, 2014 TopSpacer

A selection of space policy/politics related links:

Update:

Webcasts:

* Patrick Ritchie, Monday, 3-31-14 | Thespaceshow’s Blog – A discussion about space related presentations and sessions at the recent Southwest by Southwest (SXSW) event in Austin, Texas:

* Tues 4/1/14 Hr 4 | John Batchelor Show – Bob Zimmerman’s regular segment on space news and policy:

DIY space, Education, Near Space

JP Aerospace Kickstarter to fund 2000 student Pongsats for Sept. flight

April 1, 2014 TopSpacer 1 Comment

John Powell of JP Aerospace tells me they had a successful sale of MiniCubes last month (see JP Aerospace sale on flights of MiniCubes to NearSpace).

Their latest outreach effort is a Kickstarter to fund the flight of 2000 Pongsats in September: 2000 Student Projects to the Edge of Space by John Powell — Kickstarter

This time instead of one thousand PongSats we’re flying two thousand. We have just over 14,000 PongSats flown so far. I think that’s more student payloads then the rest of the world’s space programs combined! The PongSats are getting more and more complex. We now get PongSats with GPS’s and cameras in them and some even made on 3D printers.

(To be clear, Pongsat flights cost nothing to the students or their schools.)

Here’s the Kickstarter video:

Astronomy

NASA JPL: What’s Up for April 2014

April 1, 2014 TopSpacer

NASA JPL gives a preview of the night sky for the coming month.: What’s Up For April 2014 – “Mars at opposition, a lunar eclipse and April’s Lyrid meteor shower.”