NASA’s latest Space to Ground report on ISS activities of the past week:
Monthly Archives: April 2014
Space policy roundup – April.11.14
Yet more space policy/politics related links:
- SpaceX, a somewhat critical look – IEET – SpaceX is important because they are currently the leader in dramatically lowering the cost of access to space. This will greatly benefit all space endeavours whether they involve scientific exploration or “exploitation” of resources.
- Defense Launch:
- NASA policies
- Commercial
- US-Russia:
- NASA-Russia Cooperation: What You Need To Know – SpacePolicyOnline
- NASA Wallops: NASA cuts most ties with Russia, ripples felt in Virginia – dailypress.com
- NASA is cutting ties with Russia. But it’s not that simple – Washington Post
- Is the US-Russian space partnership spiraling out of control? – All Voices
- Global space:
Webcasts:
* Thurs 4/10/14 Hr 3 | John Batchelor Show – Bob Zimmerman (fourth guest) – twice weekly space news and policy discussion
Video: Conference keynote by Bas Lansdorp of Mars One
Bas Lansdorp, Co-founder and CEO Mars One, made the following keynote presentation at the PI Congress 2014 in Berlin, Germany in February:
The Space Project: Space sound inspired songs from 14 different artists
Lefse Records will release the album Space Project on April 18th. It is a collection of songs by 14 different artists who were challenged to use sounds transmitted from the Voyager spacecraft as inspiration for their songs:
Last Thanksgiving, Matt Halverson, who runs the Portland-based label Lefse Records, was talking with his brother in law, Exogenesis President and Chief Scientist Sean Anklam, who described a trove of recordings the NASA-launched Voyager space probes had made in the outer solar system. Halverson, the Walter White to Anklam’s Hank Schrader, was overtaken by an idea: to commission imaginative artists to create songs and soundscapes out of the Voyager recordings. The interest among musicians—including , Spiritualized, Beach House, The Antlers, Mutual Benefit, Blues Control and others—was overwhelming. Lefse will release the resulting album, entitled Space Project, on April 19, Record Store Day. It will be available on vinyl, CD, and as a 7” box set.
The audio tracks that form the raw material for Space Project were recorded by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes that NASA launched in 1977 and still uses to study the outer solar system. The satellites carry numerous instruments fine-tuned to record in different portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The “sounds” recorded by the Voyager probes aren’t sounds in the conventional sense; rather, they are electromagnetic radiation fluctuations in the magnetosphere of the planets, moons and large asteroids the Voyager probes traveled near. Each celestial body is composed of different elements, has its own size and mass, and therefore sounds unique.
Jupiter:
A Porcelain Raft: “Giove”
B The Antlers: “Jupiter”
Miranda:
A Mutual Benefit: “Terraform”
B Anna Meredith: “Miranda”
Neptune:
A The Spiritualized Mississippi Space Program: “Always Together With You (The Bridge Song)”
B The Holydrug Couple: “Amphitrites Lost”
Uranus:
A Youth Lagoon: “Worms”
B Blues Control: “Blues Danube”
Saturn:
A Beach House: “Saturn Song”
B Zomes: “Moonlet”
Earth:
A Absolutely Free: “EARTH I”
B Jesu: “Song of Earth”
Io:
A Benoit & Sergio: “Long Neglected Words”
B Larry Gus: “Sphere of Io (For Georg Cantor)”
For Canadian readers, the music can be heard now at First Play: The Space Project CBC Music.
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Find lots of links to resources for “space sounds” and music inspired by them in the HobbySpace Natural Space Music section.
Update April.17.14: Another article plus two songs from the album in this posting.
Vegetable garden going to the ISS
The upcoming SpaceX Dragon cargo mission to the Int. Space Station will include a miniature veggie garden:
Veggie Will Expand Fresh Food Production on Space Station
A plant growth chamber bound for the International Space Station inside the Dragon capsule on the SpaceX-3 resupply mission may help expand in-orbit food production capabilities in more ways than one, and offer astronauts something they don’t take for granted, fresh food.
Outredgeous red romaine lettuce plants grow inside in a prototype Veggie
flight pillow. The bellows of the hardware have been lowered to better
observe the plants. A small temperature and relative humidity data logger
is placed between the pillows small white box, central.
flight pillow. The bellows of the hardware have been lowered to better
observe the plants. A small temperature and relative humidity data logger
is placed between the pillows small white box, central.
Image Credit: NASA/Gioia Massa
NASA’s Veg-01 experiment will be used to study the in-orbit function and performance of a new expandable plant growth facility called Veggie and its plant “pillows.” The investigation will focus on the growth and development of “Outredgeous” lettuce seedlings in the spaceflight environment.
“Veggie will provide a new resource for U.S. astronauts and researchers as we begin to develop the capabilities of growing fresh produce and other large plants on the space station,” said Gioia Massa, NASA payload scientist for Veggie. “Determining food safety is one of our primary goals for this validation test.”
Veggie is a low-cost plant growth chamber that uses a flat-panel light bank that includes red, blue and green LEDs for plant growth and crew observation. Veggie’s unique design is collapsible for transport and storage and expandable up to a foot and a half as plants grow inside it.
“The internal growing area is 11.5 inches wide by 14.5 inches deep, making it the largest plant growth chamber for space to date,” Massa said.
A 28-day-old Outredgeous red romaine lettuce plant grows in a prototype v flight
pillow. U.S. astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station
are going to receive a newly developed Vegetable Production System Veggie.
pillow. U.S. astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station
are going to receive a newly developed Vegetable Production System Veggie.
Image Credit: NASA/Gioia Massa
Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORBITEC) in Madison, Wis., developed Veggie through a Small Business Innovative Research Program. NASA and ORBITEC engineers and collaborators at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida worked to get the unit’s hardware flight-certified for use on the space station.
Because real estate on the station is limited, some adjustments to the growth chamber were made to accommodate space requirements. At Kennedy’s Space Life Sciences Laboratory, a crop of lettuce and radishes was grown in the prototype test unit. Seedlings were placed in the Veggie root-mat pillows, and their growth was monitored for health, size, amount of water used, and the microorganisms that grew on them.
“I am thrilled to be a member of the Veggie and Veg-01 team and proud of all the work we have done to prepare for flight,” Massa said. “Our team is very excited to see the hardware in use on the space station.”
Outredgeous red romaine lettuce plants grow inside the bellows of a prototype
Veggie flight pillow. It will launch aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule on NASA’s
third Commercial Resupply Services mission targeted to launch April 14
from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Image Credit: NASA/Bryan Onate
Veggie flight pillow. It will launch aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule on NASA’s
third Commercial Resupply Services mission targeted to launch April 14
from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Image Credit: NASA/Bryan Onate
As NASA moves toward long-duration exploration missions, Massa hopes that Veggie will be a resource for crew food growth and consumption. It also could be used by astronauts for recreational gardening activities during long-duration space missions. The system may have implications for improving growth and biomass production on Earth, thus benefiting the average citizen.
For the future, Massa said she is looking forward to seeing all sorts of “neat payloads” in the Veggie unit and expanding its capability as NASA learns more about the food safety of crops grown in microgravity.