Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Groundweekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** “Down to Earth – A Work of Art
In this episode of “Down to Earth – A Work of Art,“ former NASA astronaut Nicole Stott recalls seeing home below during her time aboard the station. Stott explains how she experienced a shift in worldview known as “the Overview Effect,” a term coined by space philosopher Frank White.
** Jessica Meir speaks with students in Florida
In-flight event — Expedition 62 flight engineer Jessica Meir speaks with the Lee County School District in Florida.
** Space Station Crew Member Swears in Army Recruits
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 62 Flight Engineer Drew Morgan of NASA, a colonel in the U.S. Army, swore in new Army recruits gathered at the Space Center Houston visitors center in a ceremony conducted from orbit Feb. 26. Morgan, who launched to the orbital complex last July, is slated to return to Earth April 17 to complete a 272-day mission.
Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** NASA & Axiom Space Designing Commercial Expansion Of Space Station – Scott Manley
It’s been 4 years since NASA first seriously suggested the idea of commercial expansion of the International Space Station, and at the end of January they announced an agreement with Axiom Space to begin designing the extension with launches happening possibly as early as 2024. The specific details of the agreement are not clear at this time, however it’s known that the initial phase is a design study and business case analysis with reviews required before approving the next phase. https://www.nasa.gov/nextstep/issport
** NASA Astronaut Jessica Meir discusses the Zero-G Oven with Michigan students
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 62 Flight Engineer Jessica Meir of NASA discussed the revolutionary Zero-G oven recently used on the orbital outpost during an in-flight question and answer session Feb. 19 with students from the East Middle School in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The oven was launched on a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship last November, and, along with cookies baked in the oven, was returned to Earth in January on a SpaceX/Dragon resupply vehicle.
** OSCAR: NASA is developing tech for recycling in space
The Orbital Syngas Commodity Augmentation Reactor, or OSCAR, is an Early Career Initiative project funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in 2018. Work on OSCAR has demonstrated new ways to manage trash and waste in space by offering new options for safe disposal and the potential to transforming it into useful resources.
OSCAR has a reactor that uses heat, oxygen and steam to turn things like food packaging, old clothing and even human waste into water and a gas mixture. Industry calls this mixture synthetic gas or syngas, and it is primarily carbon dioxide with small amounts of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane. Molecules from syngas can be used as building blocks for beneficial products like fuel for the spacecraft. The crew can also vent these gases for easy trash disposal.
On Dec. 11, 2019, OSCAR reached a major milestone when it launched on a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. This suborbital flight added around three minutes of valuable microgravity performance data to OSCAR’s previous data from lab and drop tests. During the flight, OSCAR was able to autonomously inject trash into the high temperature reaction chamber and collect targeted product gases.
Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Down to Earth – Enjoy the View
In this episode of “Down to Earth – Enjoy the View,” NASA astronaut Mike Foreman shares how his perception of Earth changed during his time in space. He explains a shift in his worldview known as “the Overview Effect,” a term coined by space philosopher Frank White. #SpaceStation20th
** NASA ready to sending more plants and a new way to handle seeds to the International Space Station
Sending people to the Moon and Mars requires understanding how to provide nutrition for astronauts who may be away from Earth for extended periods of time. One solution is growing food in space, which can be challenging. To learn more, scientists will send three types of leafy greens and a new way to handle seeds in space to the International Space Station.
Launching from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Northrop Grumman’s 13th cargo resupply mission, the VEG-03 series of experiments will send a new crop, amara mustard, to the orbiting laboratory. Red romaine lettuce and ‘extra dwarf’ pak choi – which astronauts have grown and eaten in space – also will return to the station.
Researchers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida planted the pak choi and amara seeds in containers called plant pillows, but for red romaine lettuce, they inserted the seeds into a new type of seed-handling material called seed film. This water-soluble, dissolving film is the same material as a breath freshener strip. It will allow the crew to plant the seeds into pillows themselves, something that has never been done in orbit before. This could allow astronauts to pick and choose what crops they want to grow from a collection of seeds on the space station.
** Pre-Launch Briefing for the Antares Cygnus CRS-13 Mission
how, for each Starship, there would be 72 round trip flights to the Moon for every round trip flight to Mars. SpaceX could sell 72X more tickets if using their Starship for the Moon. For this reason, the Starship might end up being a Moon rocket initially.
For the last year, a great deal of work has been done developing one of the most extensive space advocate websites. This website covers many aspects of space development, exploration, settlement, policy, and achieving Earth independence. Not very many topics have been left out of the website. So, check it out at: DevelopSpace.info
Near-term plans for the Network are to inform more space advocates about the website and Network and the organizing of more working groups to move specific fields forward.
** The “Value of Mars Settlement” was discussed by Bishop James Heiser at the Mars Society Convention:
Starship, which is currently in development for future deep-space travel, will be able to ferry as many as 100 passengers beyond low-Earth orbit. The way to achieving that goal is by reducing the cost of spaceflight. He would like for anyone who wants to go to Mars, to be able to.
“Needs to be such that anyone can go if they want, with loans available for those who don’t have money,” Musk wrote.
To that end, Musk said he wants to build a fleet of at least 1,000 Starships—and launch at least three of them every day.
The Starship system is the latest in SpaceX’s troupe of increasingly larger rockets. In 2018, the California-based aerospace company launched and landed its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, generating 5 million pounds of thrust from the rocket’s 27 engines. But even that’s not powerful enough for Mars-based missions.
“Megatons per year to orbit are needed for life to become multi-planetary,” Musk tweeted on Thursday.
But the ship would also be able to navigate the tenuous Martian atmosphere and land safely on the red planet’s surface.
Musk estimates that a fleet of 1,000 Starships, able to tote 100 megatons of stuff to Mars, would be required to build a permanent settlement. That fleet could transport about 100 passengers each, totaling 100,000 people per year.
A SpaceX vision of a Mars settlement built with people and cargo transported via Starships.
What struck me however was the nature of the place and the experience of living at a polar station that had to manage on the supplies on hand, during an arctic winter with no sun and temperatures routinely colder than -90 degrees Fahrenheit. In many more ways that the situation at the Mars Society’s Utah facility, the U.S. South Pole station did a great job of simulating closely what living at an early Mars base will be like.
Interestingly, some of the differences would like make living on Mars easier then at that 1999 station. Because of the lack of full atmosphere on Mars, any Mars base must be sealed from the outside environment. At the south pole, they did not do this, so that the inside temperatures were generally colder than one would like. This also meant that the crews were somewhat oxygen-starved by the end of the mission, as the facility was also at about 9,000 feet elevation and thus had a thinner atmosphere then what you’d likely find inside a Martian base.
A crew of six scientists returned from “the moon” Saturday to wrap up two weeks exploring a mock lunar landscape on the side of a Hawaiian volcano.
The scientists began their mission on Jan. 18 and have been working and living at the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS, habitat as part of the third EuroMoonMars mission (EMMIHS-III) — a series of analog missions run in collaboration with the European Space Agency, the International MoonBase Alliance and HI-SEAS.
The habitat, located on a remote slope of Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii, has hosted groups of researchers and explorers on analog moon and Mars missions since its installation in 2013. Analog missions such as this put researchers in remote environments that mimick a stay on Mars or, in this case, the moon. In this environment they can conduct research while testing what it might be like for humans to spend time at a remote, off-Earth location.
The Hi-SEAS space habitat simulation facility on the northside of Mauna Loa, Hawaii
If there’s one thing the limited research shows, it’s that it’s hard to predict who will cope best and work well together as the weeks and months, maybe even years, wear on. Many factors can boost the chances of success, however, especially if crew members give each other precisely the kind of support and encouragement that people in prison are deprived of.
A well-performing team needs talented leaders and a closely knit group of people. They need to build trust between each other while they’re training, long before the rocket blasts off. Diverse, international crews could help to overcome some challenges that might come up, but that diversity also sometimes results in cultural and interpersonal problems. A larger crew would likely perform better than a smaller one, but the team’s size will always be limited by how much weight and fuel can be launched.
Once they’re in space, people need to keep busy, and they need to think they have something worthwhile to do, even if it’s actually of limited value. They also need a tiny bit of privacy and entertainment at times, which might include something they brought from home or a simulation of the family and friends they left behind. While at work, the crew members need clear goals and procedures to follow in a wide range of situations. Only people shown to be resilient under pressure for long periods and who have strong teamwork skills even in stressful, sleep-deprived conditions should be part of the crew.
** Building lunar settlements will likely rely on 3D printing techniques like that used by ESA in a test of making blocks from simulated Moon dust: 3D-printed block of moondust – ESA
The hollow cell structure of this 1.5 tonne block, 3D printed from simulated lunar dust, let it combine strength with low weight, like bird bones.
The building block is on show in the laboratory corridor of ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, visited during public tours from neighbouring Space Expo.
ESA has subsequently investigated other types of lunar 3D printing, including solar sintering and ceramics.
Closeup of a 3D-printed block of simulated Moon dust. Credits: ESA
** The Luna-27 rover is a Russian project in collaboration with ESA to investigate the resources of the southern polar region of the Moon. The rover is expected to launch in 2022. The PROSPECT instrument package, for example, will drill a meter deep into the regolith to examine various chemical properties and determine mineral and water content: One step closer to prospecting the Moon – ESA
Prospect includes a miniature laboratory called ProSPA which will analyse the soil samples retrieved by the drill. Precise measurements will help unearth the secrets of the Moon’s history and indicate whether future explorers could use lunar resources on their missions to help set up a lunar base.
The lunar south polar region is of great interest to lunar researchers and explorers because the low angle of the Sun over the horizon leads to areas of partial or even complete shadow. These shadowed areas and permanently dark crater floors, where sunlight never reaches, are believed to hide water ice and other frozen substances that could be analysed to better understand the natural processes that formed them, and used to produce resources such as oxygen and propellant in the future.
Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Christina Koch Undocks in Soyuz Crew Ship
** Christina Koch – Space Station Scientist
After almost a year in space, NASA astronaut Christina Koch is coming home. When Koch returns to Earth, she will have lived in space for 328 days, setting the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. During this record-setting mission, Koch spent many of her hours on science activities aboard the space station and wore many hats: farmer, biologist, physicist, engineer, test subject and many more. Learn more about the research being conducted on Station: https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science
** Christina Koch’s Memorable Moments: Part 5
328 days—nearly 47 full weeks in space—is the new record for the longest single spaceflight ever by a female astronaut or cosmonaut, set today by NASA astronaut Christina Koch as she completed her mission with a Soyuz landing in Kazakhstan. Koch talks about some of her cherished memories from a journey that has her now ranked seventh among NASA astronauts for cumulative time spent in space.
** Advice on Returning to Earth for Astronaut Christina Koch from Scott Kelly
After 328 days in space, NASA astronaut Christina Koch has returned to Earth, now holding the record for longest single spaceflight by a woman. Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who holds the record for longest single mission by an American astronaut at 340 days in space, offers his advice on getting used to life back on Earth.
