The two winning teams will work with engineers, artists and educators from the Playful Learning Lab, in consultation with Blue Origin and OK Go, on flight ready versions of their ideas.
The responses of the winners when informed of their selection were captured in this video:
One of the two winning teams is based in New York and includes students Alexandra Slabakis (16), Grace Clark (16), and Annabelle Clark (12). The team’s project is called “Dark Origin” and will use gravity and magnetism to simulate the origin of planet Earth.
The second winning team is based in Utah and includes students Cameron Trueblood (11), Blake Hullinger (12), and Kellen Hullinger(15). Their design proposes using environmental data taken during the space craft’s flight to create sounds and visual art.
“We were thrilled with the entries to the Art In Space contest – picking winners was so hard!” said OK Go lead singer Damian Kulash. “The submissions were all so imaginative, and really exemplified the type of thinking and creativity that OK Go is always striving for in our own work. The kids, especially our winners, clearly understand the truth that so many adults have lost along the way: there are no borders separating art and science — they’re the same thing. It all comes from curiosity and experimentation, and creativity is really just about exercising those skills.”
*** You can also send your artwork to space and back via a New Shepard. Blue Origin’s public participation initiative, Club for the Future, welcomes your art on the back of postcard
Draw or write your vision of millions of people living and working in space on the blank side of a self-addressed, stamped postcard, and send it to us. We’ll pack the first 10,000 postcards received before July 20, 2019 inside the Crew Capsule on an upcoming New Shepard flight. Your idea will launch into space! Once New Shepard returns to Earth, we’ll send your postcard back to you, officially stamped “flown to space.”
** A CNN article on the space arts covers astronaut and dancer Mae Jemison’s views on the importance of both the arts and STEM in a well-rounded education, the paintings of the Moon by the late Apollo astronaut Alan Bean, astronaut Nicole Stott’s use of art to teach kids about space, and the role of effective illustrations in explaining complex space science and astrophysics phenomena: Art and space: ‘A quest never to end’ – CNN
For the past 15 years at Caltech, the artistic duo of Robert Hurt and Tim Pyle has been creating illustrations of how gravitational waves, myriad exoplanets and even the top of the Milky Way might look if we could see them for ourselves. The images look so realistic that the captions have to remind people that they’re artistic renderings.
A rendering of the TRAPPIST-1 exo-planetary system illustrates the relative sizes of the earth-scale planets, their orbits around their ultra-cool red-dwarf sun, and the habitable zone band where water can be in liquid form rather than steam or ice for a planet with an earth-like atmosphere. Credits: Tim Pyle and Robert Hurt.
1. Monday, July 1, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): Special show this evening with Aggie Kobrin and Rod Pyle to summarize ISDC 2019 plus NSS and more.
2. Tuesday, July 2, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): We welcome back we welcome back Dr. John Jurist for a frank discussion on the Jurist perspective regarding space policy, the Moon, rockets, Mars, the Gateway, NASA, budgets, China and much more. Don’t miss it!”
3. Wednesday, July 3, 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 5, 2019; 9:30-11 am PDT (11:30 am -1 pm CDT; 12:30-2 pm EDT): No show today due to the July 4th holiday weekend.
5. Sunday, July 7, 2019; 12-1:30 pm PDT (3-4:30 pm EDT, 2-3:30 pm CDT): No show due to the July 4th holiday weekend.
**Hotel Mars – Wed, 06/26/2019 – Alan Boyle talked with John Batchelor and Dr. David Livingston about “the possible sale of Stratolaunch due to the recent death of Paul Allen”.
** Sun, 06/23/2019 – Loren Grush, space reporter at The Verge, discussed “the upcoming Falcon Heavy STP 2 launch, commercial, getting to and from the Moon, millennials and space, China, aerospace engineering, space journalism, women in space fields, green propellant and so very much more”.
“Merritt Island High School students are photographed at the Kennedy Space Center with StangSat – a cube satellite (CubeSat) that was built and developed by students at the school. StangSat [launched] on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as part of the Department of Defense Space Test Program-2 mission, managed by the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center… Credits: NASA/Shaun Daly”** Georgia Tech’s Prox-1 with LightSail-2 was successfully put into orbit by the Falcon Heavy as well. Prox-1 was built by Georgia Tech students with funding from the University Nanosat Program (UNP) and LightSail-2 was built by a team led by Ecliptic Enterprises and funded by the Planetary Society.
The sail’s cubesat will be ejected from Prox-1 this week:
LightSail 2 team members will soon converge at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California, where the spacecraft’s mission control is located. Once LightSail 2 is released from Prox-1 on 2 July, the team will spend several days checking out the CubeSat’s systems before commanding its dual-sided solar panels to deploy. Following that, the spacecraft’s solar sails will be deployed, roughly 2 weeks in total from launch day.
** Students at Cal State Poly at San Luis Obispo were involved closely with LightSail-2 and with LEO (Launch Environment Observer) cubesat also on board the FH:
Designed and built by a team of nine students pursuing a Master’s degree with Space Systems and Technology Concentration, MYSAT-2 features significant upgrades from MYSAT-1. Its primary mission is to enable students to design, implement, and test new Attitude Determination and Control (ADC) Algorithms, developed by the Khalifa University students. The algorithms help determine a CubeSat’s orientation in space, and are estimated to be 15 to 20 percent more power-efficient, in comparison with similar algorithms implemented on other spacecrafts. If successful, the new algorithms will establish the UAE as a contributor to the global space industry.
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:
** The Space Show – Sun, 06/23/2019 – Loren Grush, space reporter at The Verge, discussed “the upcoming Falcon Heavy STP 2 launch, commercial, getting to and from the Moon, millennials and space, China, aerospace engineering, space journalism, women in space fields, green propellant and so very much more”.
**The Space Show/Hotel Mars – Wed, 06/26/2019 – Alan Boyle talked with John Batchelor and Dr. David Livingston about “the possible sale of Stratolaunch due to the recent death of Paul Allen”.
The team is taking today to finalize ground system checkouts. The next available launch opportunity is no earlier than 04:30 [12:30 am EDT], 29 June UTC. As always, the priority is on mission success. #MakeItRain
Live streaming webcast will begin 20 minutes before the targeted lift-off time. Here is some background on the “Make it Rain” mission:
The Make It Rain mission will launch multiple spacecraft as part of a rideshare flight procured by Spaceflight. The launch will take place from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula.
The mission is named ‘Make it Rain’ in a nod to the high volume of rainfall in Seattle, where Spaceflight is headquartered, as well in New Zealand where Launch Complex 1 is located. Among the payloads on the mission for Spaceflight are BlackSky’s Global-3 satellite and Melbourne Space Program’s ACRUX-1 CubeSat.
The largest satellite on today’s mission is the @BlackSky_Inc#Global3 Earth observation microsat, seen here during integration onto Electron’s Kick Stage at LC-1. Thanks to the Kick Stage, we can place all satellites on today’s mission into precise and individual orbits. pic.twitter.com/NVqG0sMzXA
TM: I recently saw a stat that said SpaceX built its Falcon 9 rocket with almost $400 million, whereas there was a NASA estimate that it would cost $1.6 billion to build a similar kind of vehicle. Why is it so much cheaper for a private company to do that?
MARKUSIC: When you’re doing something in that heritage space way, you’re inheriting a lot of requirements that can drive cost up. It’s a very risk-averse framework. Many things in the government are like, “You just add money and a person. Here are the instructions—do this thing.” That type of approach is usually pretty reliable in getting the result you want, but it’s really expensive. And it’s usually undergirded by contractors who are disincentivized to make things at the lowest cost. With New Space, you’re spending people’s money; you’re not spending this amorphous blob of taxpayer money. That just pervades the whole culture.
In the second half of the year, Kyushu Yunjian […] will conduct a test of the whole machine test for the “Lingyun” engine. After the whole machine is tested, the “Lingyun” engine will enter the reliability test and assessment stage. The 80-ton “Longyun” liquid oxygen methane engine with greater thrust will also be tested and tested by other components in the second half of the year. Reusable and recycling technology verification rocket platform “Ling Wei” has completed the program demonstration, and is currently undergoing detailed engineering design and optimization.
** EU backed project pursues development of vertical landing reusable rockets.
Five European Companies and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have teamed up to tackle the shortcoming of know-how in reusable rockets in Europe, which start upright and land upright after a successful mission. For that, they commonly decided to investigate and develop key technologies to land rockets backwards. What is state-of-the- art in the USA is only in its beginnings in Europe, and the consortium is determined to accept the challenge and to become important players in this game changing technology.
RETALT (RETro propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies) is a European project which got funded with 3 Mio. € by the European Commission in the frame of Horizon 2020. The partnering organizations are the DLR (Germany), CFS Engineering (Switzerland), Elecnor Deimos (Spain), MT Aerospace (Germany), Almatech (Switzerland) and Amorim Cork Composites (Portugal).
During the three years of the project lifetime the consortium will investigate the areas of aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics (i.e. the temperatures that evolve at the surface of the vehicle during flight), flight dynamics, guidance, navigation and control, and advanced structural parts, materials and mechanisms. For this purpose, two types of rocket launchers will be investigated which both start and land in an upright position. One of them will have two stages and will be similar to conventional rockets like the Falcon 9 or the Ariane 5 launcher. For this launcher only the first stage will be landed again. The second launcher has only a single stage. It will be designed for the use of smaller payloads and when returning it will break not only with retro propulsion but also with the aid of a large aerodynamic base surface at the bottom.
Starliner’s landing system passed its final qualification test ahead of flying @NASA_Astronauts. This time we intentionally introduced two parachute failures, and #Starliner performed as expected. With crew safety as our top priority, keep watching the skies this week. pic.twitter.com/gOBIEDNvfL
Spaceport America, the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport and the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA), congratulate the University of Washington Society for Advanced Rocket Propulsion as the Champion of the Third Annual Spaceport America Cup. Champions were selected in each category, and the University of Washington team was chosen by judges from the group of category champions as the overall winner.
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From June 18–22, thousands of students and spectators flocked to southern New Mexico from all over the globe, creating an economic and tourism boost for surrounding communities as part of their attendance at the 2019 Spaceport America Cup. This year’s competition was the largest to date, with over 120 teams registered including a large international presence from 14 different countries.
“SpaceX is the world’s leading private space launch provider, and we are excited to work with the company in the next phase of its growth as it rolls out its Starlink satellite network,” said Olivia Steedman, Senior Managing Director, TIP.
SpaceX was identified as a compelling investment opportunity for TIP due to its proven track record of technology disruption in the launch space and significant future growth potential in the satellite broadband market. TIP focuses on late-stage venture capital and growth equity investments in companies that use technology to disrupt incumbents and create new sectors.
“Our investment in SpaceX fits well within the TIP investment strategy of capitalizing on significant global opportunities in new businesses and sectors that are emerging as a result of unprecedented technological change,” added Ms. Steedman.
**** The 24 satellites launched on the latest Falcon Heavy mission are operating:
The US Air Force has confirmed all satellites launched this morning by SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket have established contact with ground controllers after arriving in orbit. https://t.co/yVEQBPXBcD
#SpaceX crews were hard at work today, adding the next cylindrical section to #StarShip. It appeared that SpaceX Boca Chica crews, have kicked it into overdrive in shining and polishing the nose cone. To catch up with the Florida team, starship is going to be tall & powerful.😎🚀 pic.twitter.com/XMz6N7H9kN
In what seems to be a coincidence, Musk’s message – either recorded or streamed – was filmed on SpaceX’s Florida Starship development campus, a surprisingly large facility uncovered less than two months ago. The CEO was standing in the sun directly in front of two large segments of the second orbital-class Starship prototype, part of a parallel development process featuring a second Starship prototype (and separate Starhopper) in Texas. Musk’s appearance at Starship Florida is not particularly surprising; if he flew all the way to Florida for Falcon Heavy, might as well tour SpaceX’s newest Florida facilities on the same trip.
**** The Super Heavy Booster/StarShip combo will be quite a sight to see:
Here’s a visual representation of how #StarShip would look standing, next to other rockets.(& Statue of Liberty) source: u/wxpuck on Reddit. 🚀 (note: the StarHopper height is what it would’ve been, if the nose cone never came down.) pic.twitter.com/RjkixqIvSf
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