Muriel Anderson performs “View From Space” on harp guitar, during her “All Star Guitar Night” charity event [2009] at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN.
Pulsar music based on the data obtained from the Spectr-R space telescope and the Radioastron project. Pulsar is a rapidly rotating ultra high-density neutron star left over from a supernova explosion. Pulsar signals could be used as time references and navigation for satellites. By converting the frequency of pulsar signals into sound waves, you can compose music. Spectr-R is a space observatory launched in 2011. It was in orbit for 8 years, surpassing its warranty period by more than 2.5 times. The Radioastron project made a great contribution to the research of pulsars.
On Friday 7 June, ESA began a three-day starring role at the World Club Dome electronic dance music festival. Billed as the Space Edition, this event is the latest stage of an 18-month partnership with BigCityBeats, the company behind the show. This year’s festival featured Armin van Buuren, Jason Derulo, Steve Aoki and David Guetta among its star performers – as well as a 28-m high model of an Ariane 5, which dominated the main stage.
World Club Dome Space Edition was inaugurated with a spectacular light and music show for the crowd of 55 000 music fans. The programme recounted the history of human space exploration and highlighted ESA’s many achievements. ESA astronauts André Kuipers and Matthias Maurer took to the stage to recount their experiences and their hopes for the future.
#LightSail2 pass 3 is complete. The spacecraft was successfully commanded into solar sailing mode, and the momentum wheel spun up as expected! The team was not able to get image thumbnails down. They will try during today’s final pass starting at 15:11 PDT [18:11 EDT].
** India launches the Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission, which includes an orbiter, lander, and rover. The spacecraft’s elliptical orbit of Earth will gradually extend farther and farther out until on August 14 the engines will fire to put the spacecraft on course for the Moon. It will go into lunar orbit on August 20th. The goal is to separate the lander/rover combo from the orbiter on September 1st and settle down on the lunar surface on September 6th. If successful, the landing will be the first time a spacecraft has reached the southern polar region, where water ice is believed to be embedded in the floors of permanently dark craters.
** Russian Soyuz launches 3 new ISS crew members and docks with the station just 6 hours after liftoff. The July 20th flight took place on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Currently, the US has no operational system for putting people into orbit (though, in a pinch, the SpaceX Cargo Dragon could certainly be configured to take someone to orbit).
The new members of the ISS crew include cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA physician-astronaut Andrew Morgan. More at:
announced its next launch is a mission carrying satellites destined to begin a new constellation for UNSEENLABS, as well as more rideshare payloads for Spaceflight, consisting of a spacecraft for BlackSky and the United States Air Force Space Command.
The mission – named ‘Look Ma, No Hands’ – will lift-off in August from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, carrying a total of four satellites aboard an Electron launch vehicle.
*** Falcon 9 set to launch Cargo Dragon on CRS-18 mission on Wednesday at 6:24 pm EDT (2224 GMT) from Cape Canaveral. The weather forecast (pdf), however, gives only a 30% chance of acceptable conditions for liftoff within the instantaneous launch window.
*** A fuel leak fire following the Starhopper static engine test last week resulted in a scary fireball but caused no significant damage to the vehicle. The first brief flight of the vehicle is planned for this week.
#SpaceX crews hard at work today under the hot #Texas.☀️ progress on the polishing of #StarShip nosecone is making significant progress, meanwhile the team seem to be preparing to erect another section for the windbreaker. Crews seen doing inspections on raptor and #StarHopper.🚀 pic.twitter.com/ByYMYYAzgo
If the above Starhopper test flight is successful, Elon promises to provide a more extensive update soon after on the latest design details.
*** Elon Musk discusses SpaceX projects in two interviews. Highlights include his belief that the first crewed Dragon mission to the ISS will happen within 6 months, an uncrewed Starship could land on the Moon within 2 years, and with a crew in 3-4 years:
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:
** Asteroid Day LIVE 2019 – Videos of seminars and panel discussions on planetary defense related topics. For example: this video shows a discussion of
Planetary Defense and in particular, the importance of Asteroid Deflection Missions, DART and HERA. The panel will look at Europe‘s role in US-European cooperation and evaluate the importance and value of multi-country and private industry collaborations on Space Missions and Planetary Science.
** Was the Apollo Program a Bad Idea? | A SciShow Documentary – An extended SciShow video sponsored by Draper’s “We Hack the Moon” initiative, which describes
…how engineers guided us to the moon and back with a fraction of today’s technology. The Apollo program was famous for being risky and expensive. It had a crunched timeline, daring astronauts, and lacked modern tech, and that all kind of makes you wonder… was the Apollo program a bad idea?
1. Monday, July 22, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): No show on Monday which is now reserved for special programming.
2. Tuesday, July 23, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): We welcome back Michelle Evans for her take on Apollo history and more.
3. Wednesday, July 24, 2019: Hotel Mars. See Upcoming Show Menu and the website newsletter for details. Hotel Mars is pre-recorded by John Batchelor. It is archived on The Space Show site after John posts it on his website.
4. Friday, July 26, 2019; 9:30-11 am PDT (11:30 AM-1 pm CDT, 12:30-2 pm EDT): We welcome back Brad Blair to talk about lunar engineering and many other relevant topics.
5. Sunday, July 28, 2019; 12-1:30 pm PDT (3-4:30 pm EDT, 2-3:30 pm CDT): OPEN LINES. All callers welcome on space, science STEM, STEAM subjects. First time callers wanted.
** Tue, 07/16/2019 – Douglas Messier talked about Virgin Galactic, “human spaceflight, NASA key personnel changes, congressional funding for NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin and much more”.
** Sun, 07/14/2019 – Open lines discussion program with listeners.
** Fri, 07/12/2019 – Dr. John Brandenburg talked about “Death on Mars due to huge nuclear bomb explosions, advanced propulsion, beam technology, remote viewing of Mars, XE and Iodine isotopes in the Martian atmosphere, Woodward Mach thrusters & more”.
Students are in the final stages of progression from using 3-D printed plastic prototypes to working with space-age materials. The Robertsville Rams’ so-called Ramsat will help study regrowth of forests in the Smokies from space.
The student group, mentored by professionals at nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory, are awaiting word from NASA on which launch would send up their cubesat as secondary payload to the International Space Station.
At SDSM&T, a small group of engineering students are working to take the cubesat to a new level through NASA’s cubesate launch initiative.
“We need to be able to use a camera to figure out where a cubesat is relative to another cubesat,” said Skye Rutan-Bedard, undergraduate researcher.
…
The goal is to communicate between multiple cubesats, getting them close together in space.
“By introducing better technology for getting these cubesats to localize, when they’re close to each other they can produce densely packed constellations and also means we can experiment with docking and getting individual cubesats to dock in orbit,” said Rutan-Bedard.
University of Arizona researchers will use $3 million in NASA funding over three years to research the low-gravity surface environments of asteroids, and to provide students from underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to design, build and operate CubeSats, or miniature satellites at the UA.
The project was selected through NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project Institutional Research Opportunity, or MIRO, program. The UA, which was designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution in 2018, is one of eight institutions to receive a share of more than $8.2 million in cooperative agreements awarded through the MIRO program.
“This project will help us understand asteroid surface geophysics in a way that no one has done before,” said Erik Asphaug, deputy principal investigator for the project and a professor in the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “And the students get to participate in a low-cost endeavor that has huge implications for how we work with asteroids in near-Earth space.”
** Univ. Central Florida Q-PACE CubeSat to study how small dust particles grew into planets:
In the very early stages of planet formation, dust grains trapped in a disk around the young star gently collide with each other, sticking and growing into bigger aggregates. Similarly, particles in planetary rings collide at very low relative velocities and form aggregates leading to many an observed features of Saturn’s rings for example. To better understand these low-velocity collisions and the growth of aggregates, microgravity experiments observing multi-particles systems are required. In particular, collision data for µm to cm-sized particles will help closing the current gap in knowledge of how dust grows into km-sized bodies, as well as better our understanding of particle dynamics in planetary rings.
Q-PACE (CubeSat Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment) will observe a set of 0.1 mm to cm-sized particles colliding and growing under microgravity conditions. This 3U CubeSat will allow that inherits its format from the NanoRocks experiment currently on the International Space Station will allow for the observation of particle dynamical evolution and growth for an unprecedented duration in time of several years.
” and our return to the Moon plus other topics”.
