Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Christina Koch’s Memorable Moments: Part 4
The longest-ever single spaceflight by a female astronaut is now 322 days long, and still counting! Today NASA astronaut Christina Koch moved past her colleague Suni Williams into seventh place for most time spent in space among all American astronauts. With less than a week to go, Koch recalls the biggest surprise of the mission and the most memorable item she received on a cargo flight.
** Down to Earth – Black Velvet of Space
In honor of the space station 20th anniversary, NASA Astronaut Bill McArthur shares his experience living and working in space aboard the International Space Station in this episode of “Down to Earth – Black Velvet of Space.” As he describes it, he experienced a shift in his worldview known as “the Overview Effect,” a term coined by space philosopher Frank White.
** Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo resupply vehicle departed from the ISS on Friday morning:
January 29, 2020, Seattle, Washington – Xplore Inc., a commercial space company providing Space As A Service™ today announced a partnership in which Nanoracks will provide commercial deep space flight opportunities for its customers and serve as a customer interface for payload design, preparation and integration on Xplore missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus, Lagrange Points and near-Earth asteroids.
Nanoracks has dramatically expanded the commercialization of space in low-Earth orbit by launching cubesats and microsatellites from the International Space Station, and launching hundreds of microgravity experiments, for customers since 2009. Xplore founder Lisa Rich said,
“Xplore and Nanoracks have joined forces to create higher-cadence, low-cost flight opportunities to the inner solar system via the Xplore Xcraft™.” She continued: “Xplore’s multi-mission spacecraft has a large payload bay, ample power, electric propulsion and precision pointing capability to perform advanced planetary science, heliophysics, astrophysics, planetary defense and national security missions for our customers. Scientists need more flight opportunities to the Moon, Mars, Venus and other interplanetary destinations. Together, Xplore and Nanoracks will deliver this access and enable scientists to focus on the science, not the spacecraft.”
Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber said,
“Commercial space no longer stops at low-Earth orbit. Xplore paves the way for commercial utilization and services to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. We are truly excited at Nanoracks to be working with Xplore to bring our commercial knowledge from low-Earth orbit into deep space exploration.”
Xplore will advance commercialization of deep space by promoting science, accelerating innovation and growing programmatic-level efforts with established and emerging space agencies around the world. Xplore’s Xcraft™ is a highly-capable ESPA-class spacecraft that can carry 30kg – 70kg of payload in 50U volume and provide customers with the opportunity to fly scheduled or custom orbital missions. Beginning with Moon Xpeditions™ targeted for late 2021, customers can fly instruments including optical instruments, space weather instruments, hyperspectral imagers, deployable cubesats, life science experiments, technology demonstrations and more from the Moon to Ceres. Lisa Rich said, “Nanoracks’ ability to prepare and integrate our customers’ instruments onto Xplore’s spacecraft platform allows Xplore to launch payloads faster and accelerate access to space.”
About Xplore: Established in 2017, Xplore is a Seattle-based commercial deep space company offering Space As A Service™. Xplore provides hosted payloads, communication relay services and exclusive datasets to its customers via a fleet of networked multi-mission spacecraft.
The mission of Xplore is to expand robotic
exploration beyond Earth via commercial missions to the Moon, Mars,
Venus, Lagrange Points and near-Earth asteroids in the inner solar
system. Xplore provides hosted payload services for scientific
instruments and technology demonstrations for national space
agencies, national security agencies, sovereign space agencies and
universities. Visit: https://www.xplore.com
About Nanoracks: Established in 2009, Nanoracks is the world’s first commercial space station company with an existing customer base. The company offers low-cost, high-quality solutions to the most pressing needs for satellite deployment, basic and educational research and both at home and in 30 nations world-wide for those new to the industry and aerospace veterans. Since 2009, Texas-based Nanoracks has truly created new markets, and ushered in a new era of in space-services.
As of
February 2018, over 600 payloads have been launched to the
International Space Station via Nanoracks services, and our customer
base includes the European Space Agency (ESA) the German Space Agency
(DLR,) the American space agency (NASA,) US Government Agencies,
Planet Labs, Millennium Space Systems, Space Florida, NCESSE, Virgin
Galactic, pharmaceutical companies, and organizations in Vietnam, UK,
Romania and Israel. Visit: http://nanoracks.com
** Obtaining oxygen and metals from lunar regolith: Nearly half of the chemical content of lunar dust is oxygen and most of the rest contains metals, both essential for sustainable lunar settlements. Here is a report from ESA on research into an efficient way to extract these resources from lunar regolith: ESA opens oxygen plant – making air out of moondust – ESA
ESTEC’s oxygen extraction is taking place using a method called molten salt electrolysis, involving placing regolith in a metal basket with molten calcium chloride salt to serve as an electrolyte, heated to 950°C. At this temperature the regolith remains solid.
But passing a current through it causes the oxygen to be extracted from the regolith and migrate across the salt to be collected at an anode. As a bonus this process also converts the regolith into usable metal alloys.
In fact this molten salt electrolysis method was developed by UK company Metalysis for commercial metal and alloy production. Beth’s PhD involved working at the company to study the process before recreating it at ESTEC.
On the left side of this before and after image is a pile of simulated lunar soil, or regolith; on the right is the same pile after essentially all the oxygen has been extracted from it, leaving a mixture of metal alloys. Both the oxygen and metal could be used in future by settlers on the Moon. Samples returned from the lunar surface confirm that lunar regolith is made up of 40-45% percent oxygen by weight, its single most abundant element. Credits: ESA
“At Metalysis, oxygen produced by the process is an unwanted by-product and is instead released as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, which means the reactors are not designed to withstand oxygen gas itself,” explains Beth. “So we had to redesign the ESTEC version to be able to have the oxygen available to measure. The lab team was very helpful in getting it installed and operating safely.”
The oxygen plant runs silently, with the oxygen produced in the process is vented into an exhaust pipe for now, but will be stored after future upgrades of the system.
“The production process leaves behind a tangle of different metals,” adds Alexandre, “and this is another useful line of research, to see what are the most useful alloys that could be produced from them, and what kind of applications could they be put to.
The use of lava tubes on Mars as emergency shelters and storage has been advanced by researchers at the Antarctic Institute of Canada.
Lava tubes are formed from fast moving lava which later cools and forms roomy caves that might serve various functions for future human expeditions to the Red Planet.
Svetozar Zirnov, Daniel Polo, and Austin Mardon of the institute floated the idea at this week’s Seventh International Conference on Mars Polar Science and Exploration being held in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.
Science fiction often imagines our future on Mars and other planets as run by machines, with metallic cities and flying cars rising above dunes of red sand. But the reality may be even stranger – and “greener.” Instead of habitats made of metal and glass, NASA is exploring technologies that could grow structures out of fungi to become our future homes in the stars, and perhaps lead to more sustainable ways of living on Earth as well.
The myco-architecture project out of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley is prototyping technologies that could “grow” habitats on the Moon, Mars and beyond out of life – specifically, fungi and the unseen underground threads that make up the main part of the fungus, known as mycelia.
“Right now, traditional habitat designs for Mars are like a turtle — carrying our homes with us on our backs – a reliable plan, but with huge energy costs,” said Lynn Rothschild, the principal investigator on the early-stage project. “Instead, we can harness mycelia to grow these habitats ourselves when we get there.”
Ultimately, the project envisions a future where human explorers can bring a compact habitat built out of a lightweight material with dormant fungi that will last on long journeys to places like Mars. Upon arrival, by unfolding that basic structure and simply adding water, the fungi will be able to grow around that framework into a fully functional human habitat – all while being safely contained within the habitat to avoid contaminating the Martian environment.
This video from the NIAC 2018 Symposium includes a presentation about the fungi construction starting at around the 1:25:00 point:
We propose a public/private partnership to develop and demonstrate space solar power at a sufficiently high technical level that commercial energy providers can subsequently build operational systems for high-energy-cost environments such as remote mining facilities. The outlines of the partnership are based on the successful Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program that helped develop the SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher/Dragon capsule and the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares launcher and Cygnus spacecraft. The Space Solar Power Demo development described here features minimal NASA oversight, milestone-driven fixed-price payouts, minimal exit criteria, substantial commercial partner funding commitments, non-traditional contracts (e.g., Space Act Agreements with NASA), commercial partner choice of energy market and energy consumer, enabling system development (e.g., space robotics), and at least two winners.
** Settling the moons of Saturn: The Space Show – Tue, 01/14/2020 – In this interview, Janelle Wellons of NASA JPL talked about Titan and other moons of Saturn and commented on the possibility of someday putting human settlements on them:
** Weekly Space Hangout: December 18, 2019 – Anita Gale of Space Settlement Design Competitions
We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page. Tonight we welcome Anita Gale, retired Boeing Associate Technical Fellow with over 40 years of experience in Payload and Cargo Integration on crewed spacecraft, including Space Shuttle and Commercial Crew. She is currently an elected member of the National Space Society (NSS) Executive Committee. Anita co-founded Space Settlement Design Competitions which give high school students on six continents the experience of working on an aerospace industry proposal team to design and sell a space settlement in the context of “future history.” To learn more about the competitions, visit https://spaceset.org/ You can read Anita’s full bio at https://space.nss.org/anita-gale-biog…
Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Christina Koch’s Memorable Moments: Part 1 (Repeat this segment shown last week along now with parts 2 & 3 below)
The longest single spaceflight ever by a female astronaut or cosmonaut is now 306 days long, with more to come. On top of adding to her total spaceflight time, NASA astronaut Christina Koch looks back over her long mission and recalls some favorite moments, including her favorite meal and most memorable view from orbit.
Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Down to Earth – Episode 6 – Ever Changing Picture
As we enter the year the space station 20th anniversary, NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson shares what stood out to her most about seeing Earth from orbit in this episode of “Down to Earth – Ever Changing Picture.” The shift in worldview is inspired by space philosopher Frank White.
** Christina Koch’s Memorable Moments: Part 2
The longest single spaceflight ever by a female astronaut or cosmonaut is now 306 days long, with more to come. On top of adding to her total spaceflight time, NASA astronaut Christina Koch looks back over her long mission and recalls some favorite moments, including her favorite meal and most memorable view from orbit.
** Train Like An Astronaut: Kelly Marie Tran and Naomi Ackie
On December 11th, 2019, Kelly Marie Tran and Naomi Ackie from the film Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker spent the day at NASA’s Johnson Space Center training like astronauts and learning about NASA’s plans to explore the Moon with the new Artemis program, which includes landing the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024. Follow Tran and Ackie – used to traveling through galaxies far, far away – through their training with NASA astronauts Meghan McArthur and Jessica Watkins on a gravity offload system, in the Orion crew capsule, an exploration rover, and much more! Music from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker featured tracks include: Main FanFare, The Rise of Skywalker, and The Finale composed by John Williams.
** NASA Astronauts Spacewalk Outside the International Space Station on Jan. 15, 2020
On Wednesday, Jan. 15, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch will step outside of the International Space Station into the vacuum of space together. The duo will replace old nickel-hydrogen batteries with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries to continue upgrading station power systems on the Port-6 truss structure. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 6:50 a.m. EST and last about six-and-a-half hours.
