The Space Show this week – July.22.2019

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

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.

Some recent shows:

** Sun, 07/21/2019Rand Simberg and Bill Simon talked about the Evoloterra ceremony in honor of the anniversary of Apollo 11 and about current space developments and policy issues.

** Tue, 07/16/2019Douglas 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, 07/12/2019Dr. 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”.

** Thu, 07/11/2019Leonard David spoke about “new book, “Moon Rush: The New Space Race” and our return to the Moon plus other topics”.

See also:
* The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
* The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
* The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston
The Space Show – David Livingston

 

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – July.22.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

** East Tennessee middle school students build cubesat for launch from the ISS:

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.

** Students at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology working on CubeSat formation flying: Space exploration research ongoing at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology – KNBN NewsCenter1

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.

** Arizona and Puerto Rico students to build CubeSats to carry out asteroid surface simulation experiments: $3M in NASA Funding to Help Students Build CubeSats | UANews

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. 

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-202 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • AMSAT is proud to announce the relaunch of its AMSAT Ambassador Program
  • Watch for ISS, SSTV Activity
  • Nihon University Announces FO-99 US Operation Plan
  • FO-29 update from JARL
  • 2019 Mid-Year Fundraising Letter
  • 2019 37th AMSAT Space Symposium and Annual General Meeting
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • ARISS News
  • Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

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The Case for Space:
How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up
a Future of Limitless Possibility

Videos: “Space to Ground” ISS report – July.19.2019

This week’s episode of NASA’s Space to Ground reports on activities related to the  International Space Station:

** Astronaut Training: Then and Now

Mission training for astronauts reflects the missions themselves: rigorous. In the Apollo era, astronauts and engineers prepared for the unknown as much as possible, but knew how to improvise in unprecedented situations. Currently, we’ve set our sights on going further, and our modern technology has allowed us to train much more safely – all in pursuit of our next giant leap.

** Astronaut Moments: Drew Morgan

Description: Before launching to the International Space Station on the anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind,” astronaut Drew Morgan was making his own giant leaps out of airplanes as part of his training.

** We Go as the Artemis Generation

We Go: To the Moon and on to Mars. Our generation, the Artemis generation, will explore farther than we’ve ever gone before. The Artemis program will send the first woman and next man to walk on the surface of the Moon and build a sustainable base to prepare for missions to Mars and beyond.

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Outpost in Orbit:
A Pictorial & Verbal History of the Space Station

Space policy roundup – July.19.2019

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:

Webcasts:

**  Back to the Moon: This Time to Stay? – SETI Institute. The first of two public seminars on NASA’s Artemis lunar program.

… Greg Schmidt, Director of the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), and Michael Sims, CEO, and founder of Ceres Robotics will present this first talk.

Greg leads NASA’s lunar exploration research program and will give us an update on Artemis. Michael, an expert on AI and robotic exploration, will describe the activities of Ceres Robotics in the exploration of the Moon and the understanding of its geology and surface properties. After a short presentation, both speakers will participate in a discussion about the past, present, and future of lunar exploration moderated by David Morrison, Senior Scientist at SSERVI and former director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute.

** July 16, 2019 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast | Behind The Black

** Episode T+126: The NASA Ousters – Main Engine Cut Off

** The Space Show – Tue, 07/16/2019Douglas Messier talked about Virgin Galactic, “human spaceflight, NASA key personnel changes, congressional funding for NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin and much more”.

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Safe Is Not an Option

Video: “How to Draw the Lunar Lander”

Artist Stanley Von Medvey shows how to draw the Apollo lunar lander:

If you prefer to build a model of the lander, here are some paper model guides for download:

Here’s a 1960s era NASA fact sheet for the Lunar Module (pdf).

And a simulator: Eagle Lander 3D (EL3D)

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Aoshima Apollo Lunar Module Eagle-5 Model Kit

Everyone can participate in space