Monthly Archives: August 2018

Education, micro-g R&D, Rockets

EXOS Aerospace to launch student and medical research payloads on suborbital rocket

This Saturday at Spaceport America in New Mexico, EXOS Aerospace will attempt the first launch of the company’s reusable suborbital sounding rocket, which has the title SARGE (Suborbital Autonomous Rocket with GuidancE) . The rocket will be carrying payloads for  student projects and medical research experiments:

Reusable Rocket to Carry Student and Medical Research Payloads into Space

Researching science in space has long been a costly endeavor. A rocket launching from New Mexico’s Spaceport America this Saturday may help change that when an EXOS Aerospace SARGE test flight heads into space carrying student and other research experiments.

Tune in to the launch live stream here at the EXOS YouTube channel. It will go active when the live stream begins:

youtube.com/channel/UCh2dmwg4BVRAznfQgdhTm7w/live

Currently, liftoff is planned for 1:00 ET on Saturday (12:00 CT, 11:00 MT, 10:00 PT). The EXOS website (exosaero.com) has a countdown timer.

“Reusable rocket technology makes it possible to cut the launch waiting period for a payload dramatically, while also reducing costs,” said EXOS Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer John Quinn. “This lowers the barriers for the types of NewSpace education experiments made possible by Enterprise In Space (EIS).”

The EIS student experiments were created at the Grand Center Arts Academy (GCAA) in Saint Louis, Missouri. EIS worked with Andrew Goodin of GCAA and 24 students from his “Building Creative Confidence” class on experiments related to topics such as using the heat of space to melt crayons into space art and determining the effects of the space environment on maple tree seeds that will be grown on Earth when returned from space. To house the experiments, Goodin’s class produced a 3D-printed container that met the criteria of EXOS. In less than two months, they made a 3D-printed cube housing and drop tested it to ensure the object would survive the rocket trip.

Also onboard, the Center for Applied Space Technology (CAST)-sponsored Biological Research in Canister (BRIC) experiment features nine petri dishes containing biological material and is anticipated to have terrestrial and long-duration space flight applications. The BRIC project supports two proof-of-concept projects in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic of Florida Space Medicine program. These projects include an innovative passive flight-crew monitoring system and a cutting-edge organ-on-a-chip experiment.

Enterprise In Space, a nonprofit program of the National Space Society, has led the effort as part of its focus on STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math) education and space exploration advocacy. EXOS is hosting the Enterprise In Space and CAST payloads as an in-kind contribution.

“This is the first of many anticipated suborbital research space flights,” said Shawn Case, EIS founder and chairman of the EIS board. “Our goal is to inspire the next generation of future astronauts and space explorers by doing valuable scientific experiments in space. The experiments going up with the SARGE rocket look at some really cutting-edge science, and we’re thrilled to be able to launch the educational payload for Goodin’s class.”

EIS plans to work with EXOS to create an educational K-12 curriculum for the EIS Academy (www.eisacademy.org), as the two partners further develop a long-term relationship.

About Enterprise In Space: Enterprise In Space (EIS) is the world’s first NewSpace education program. EIS provides access to STEAM education to all through the open online EIS Academy. The program’s first Academy-wide project is the design, launch, and retrieval of a 3D-printed spacecraft carrying 100+ active and passive experiments from K-postgrad student teams from all around the world.

About the National Space Society (NSS): NSS is an independent nonprofit educational membership organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. NSS is widely acknowledged as the preeminent citizen’s voice on space, with over 50 chapters in the United States and around the world. The Society publishes Ad Astra magazine, an award-winning periodical chronicling the most important developments in space.

About EXOS Aerospace Systems and Technologies: EXOS is a leading developer of reusable space launch vehicles and is based in Greenville, Texas. EXOS provides affordable, repeatable, and reliable commercial spaceflight with accelerated turnaround.

About the Grand Center Arts Academy: GCAA Grand Center Arts Academy provides the highest level of academic and artistic education for the most talented students in the St. Louis community.

About the Center for Applied Space Technology: The Center for Applied Space Technology (CAST) is a 501(c)(3) corporation based in Florida with offices at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport and Jacksonville, FL. The Center has supported space medicine research in the laboratory and on parabolic, high altitude balloon and suborbital space flight, as well as on board the International Space Station. The EXOS flight will provide the CAST team with another significant opportunity to explore and characterize the behavior of biological systems when in the environment of microgravity.

About Made In Space: Made In Space, Inc. is the world’s most experienced in-space manufacturing company. Established in 2010 and with offices in Florida, California, Alabama and Ohio, Made In Space leverages the unique properties of the space environment to develop manufacturing solutions to commercial, industrial, research and defense challenges.

Additional Media Assets Available:

====

 

Eyes in the Sky, Real-time space

Hurricane Lane tracked from space as it nears Hawaii

Satellites are key to tracking hurricanes and giving sufficient warning to reduce damages and loss of life. Hurricane Lane, a rare major storm in the central Pacfic, is heading towards Hawaii and is being watched by satellites in GEO as well as by the ISS.

** Hurricane Lane from the ISS

Hurricane Lane was pictured by an Expedition 56 crew member as the International Space Station orbited nearly 250 miles above the Central Pacific Ocean on Aug. 22, 2018.

Hurricane Lane from the ISS

** NOAA satellite image – Aug.23.2018

** GOES satellite image time lapse of Lane movement on Aug.22.201

** Major Hurricane Lane Heads Toward Hawaii – (NESDIS – Aug.22.2018

GOES-15 satellite shows Hurricane Lane. Credits NOAA.

** NASA ISS video:

** NASA’s GPM Sees Hurricane Lane Threatening Hawaiian Islands With Heavy Rainfall

On Aug. 22 at 1:48 a.m. EDT (0548 UTC) the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite passed over Hurricane Lane when it was a Category 5 hurricane in the Central Pacific Ocean. GPM found very heavy rain occurring in powerful storms located in Lane’s well defined eye wall. Moderate to heavy rainfall was also covering a large area extending outward from the eye. Credit: NASA/JAXA, Hal Pierce

** NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP Satellite Views Category 5 Hurricane Lane

On Aug. 22 at 8:08 a.m. EDT (0208 HST/1208 UTC) The VIIRS instrument aboard NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP Satellite passed over Hurricane Lane when it was a Category 5 storm in the Central Pacific Ocean. Suomi NPP provided night-time and infrared imagery that showed the eye, gravity waves, and feeder bands of thunderstorms wrapping into the eye. Image Credit: UWM-CIMSS/William Straka III.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP Satellite Views Category 5 Hurricane Lane

====

 

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Models

Build a LEGO version of the Planet Labs Dove satellite

These days even elementary student groups and small organizations are building CubeSats and seeing them go into orbit. If you are not up to building and launching a working spacecraft yourself, here are the directions for assembling a LEGO model of the Dove earth imaging CubeSat developed by the company Planet of Silicon Valley:  Planet Labs Dove – Instructions, Parts List, Options

Custom built LEGO model of the Planet Dove 3U CubeSat

The history of the project can be found in the blog posts by Scott Moore, Jr. at LEGO Designs.

====

 

Activism, Mars, The Moon

The 21st Annual Mars Society Conference in Pasadena this weekend

The 21st Annual International Mars Society Convention starts tomorrow in Pasadena, California and will last through Sunday.  Check out the schedule (pdf) packed with keynote talks and multiple parallel session tracks. There are over 40 different sessions listed in the Conference flyer (pdf).

I expect the Mars Society Youtube Channel will provide a live webcast and will later include recordings of presentations. If you are in Southern California this week, you can attend via registration at the door.

Mars Society co-founder and president Bob Zubrin previewed the conference on a recent episode of The Space Show.

One of the highlights of the event will be a debate on the utility and cost-effectiveness of NASA’s proposed Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a human-tended facility to be put into orbit around the Moon: Timely Debate on Lunar Orbit Platform-Gateway at Mars Society Convention – The Mars Society. NASA is presenting LOG-G as one of the ways to use the Moon to prove technology that will be useful later for Mars missions. Zubrin is highly skeptical that LOP-G is useful for either Moon or Mars missions.

====

 

Space Science, Space Settlement, The Moon

Presence of water ice on the Moon confirmed

Deposits of water in craters on the polar regions of the Moon has been indicated since the early 1990s when the Clementine probe saw radar reflections from the surface that were consistent with water ice. The Lunar Prospector mission not long after reported neutron scattering data that also indicated large amounts of water. Evidence continued to build with further studies form missions like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. However, there were lingering doubts over the extent of the water and whether the signals were actually due more to hydroxyl (HO−) than to pure water (H2O). The water molecules might also be scattered within the dust of the lunar regolith  rather than collected into solid ice.

This week a study of sensor data from the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission was released and it appears to confirm once and for all that there are in fact extensive deposits of water ice in the permanently shadowed floors of craters at the poles of the Moon. This water offers a tremendous boon for human activities on the Moon since it means an essential resource to support life is there and doesn’t have to be brought from earth at great expense. In addition water can be relatively easily split into hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel and for energy storage.

Ice Confirmed at the Moon’s Poles

The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. Blue represents the ice locations, plotted over an image of the lunar surface, where the gray scale corresponds to surface temperature (darker representing colder areas and lighter shades indicating warmer zones). The ice is concentrated at the darkest and coldest locations, in the shadows of craters. This is the first time scientists have directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface. Credits: NASA. › Larger view

In the darkest and coldest parts of its polar regions, a team of scientists has directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface. These ice deposits are patchily distributed and could possibly be ancient. At the southern pole, most of the ice is concentrated at lunar craters, while the northern pole’s ice is more widely, but sparsely spread.

A team of scientists, led by Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University and including Richard Elphic from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, used data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument to identify three specific signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon.

M3, aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched in 2008 by the Indian Space Research Organization, was uniquely equipped to confirm the presence of solid ice on the Moon. It collected data that not only picked up the reflective properties we’d expect from ice, but was able to directly measure the distinctive way its molecules absorb infrared light, so it can differentiate between liquid water or vapor and solid ice.

Most of the newfound water ice lies in the shadows of craters near the poles, where the warmest temperatures never reach above minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of the very small tilt of the Moon’s rotation axis, sunlight never reaches these regions.

Previous observations indirectly found possible signs of surface ice at the lunar south pole, but these could have been explained by other phenomena, such as unusually reflective lunar soil.

With enough ice sitting at the surface — within the top few millimeters — water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon’s surface.

Learning more about this ice, how it got there, and how it interacts with the larger lunar environment will be a key mission focus for NASA and commercial partners, as we endeavor to return to and explore our closest neighbor, the Moon.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 20, 2018.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, designed and built the moon mineralogy mapper instrument and was home to its project manager.

====