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NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, slated for take off as soon as this March, aims to send an Orion spacecraft around the moon. The cabin will be largely empty, save for an a interactive tablet that has been dubbed “Callisto,” which will sit propped up to face an astronaut mannequin. Callisto is essentially a touch-screen device that features reconfigured versions of Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, and Cisco’s teleconferencing platform WebEx.

Among the many aspects that will be closely watched on the ground — at least by the group behind this Alexa experiment — is how the virtual assistant performs in space. And if nothing else, it’ll be some well-placed advertising.

It’s all part of a collaboration between Amazon, (AMZN) Cisco (CSCO) 0, and Lockheed Martin (LMT) 0, which built the Orion capsule for NASA. Lockheed approached the other two companies with the idea of developing a virtual assistant about three years ago, the companies said, and they are paying the full cost of including the virtual assistant on the Artemis 1 mission. Lockheed is also reimbursing NASA for any help the agency has lent on this project through an arrangement called a Space Act Agreement, which allows the space agency to be compensated for expertise or resources it gives to companies working on certain space-related projects.

Musk plans to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.


Here is what you need to know about Musk’s mission.

What is the Mars city?

Musk plans to build a full-size city on the surface of Mars. This would be a city open to regular people, not just scientists and researchers.

People interested in moving to Mars could pay for their flight with a loan. Once there, people would be able to pay off the loan by working in anything from iron foundries to pizzerias. Musk declared at a 2016 conference that there would be labor shortages for a long time.

Roughly 13.8 billion years ago, our Universe was born in a massive explosion that gave rise to the first subatomic particles and the laws of physics as we know them.

About 370,000 years later, hydrogen had formed, the building block of stars, which fuse hydrogen and helium in their interiors to create all the heavier elements. While hydrogen remains the most pervasive element in the Universe, it can be difficult to detect individual clouds of hydrogen gas in the interstellar medium (ISM).

This makes it difficult to research the early phases of star formation, which would offer clues about the evolution of galaxies and the cosmos.

Planet-spotting is all about perspective.

From where we stand in our orbit of the Sun the closest planet to us, Venus, will come to what astronomers call inferior conjunction on Sunday, January 9.

After over six months of shining brightly in the west in the post-sunset sky in its apparition as the “Evening Star,” on that day Venus will finally disappear from sight.… See more.

It looks like Elon is putting more of his money into SpaceX. This makes sense as he has tons of money and SpaceX seems to have more growth potential than Tesla because his Starlink and Starship will both be very hard for other companies to compete against. (Just the amount of capital it would take to make competing products is staggering.)

I’m not saying that Tesla won’t be worth $10 trillion one day, I’m just saying SpaceX has more growth potential. Elon seems to agree.


What’s Elon Musk doing with the billions he’s collected in the past two months from selling shares in Tesla?

It seems possible, maybe even likely, that he’s put at least some of the money into SpaceX, the other company of which he is CEO and primary shareholder.

Most of the proceeds from his $16.4 billion in Tesla stock sales since November 8 will go to pay an estimated $11 billion federal tax bill, leaving him with more than $5 billion to do whatever he sees fit.

Lockheed’s Star Clipper was a proposed Earth-to-orbit spaceplane based on a large lifting body spacecraft and a wrap-around drop tank. Originally proposed during a USAF program in 1966, the basic Star Clipper concept lived on during the early years of the NASA Space Shuttle program, and as that project evolved, in a variety of new versions like the LS-200.

The LS-200 was very similar to the earlier version, it was smaller overall, The M-1 engines were replaced with the Space Shuttle Main Engines.

As we approach the new year, there’s always talk of new trends. One such trend that finally kicked off in 2021 and will undoubtedly gain momentum in 2022 is space tourism. By mid-2021, two private companies — Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin — launched paying customers to space.

While we haven’t yet gotten commercial space stations or moon vacations, space tourism is definitely here to stay — and will have some exciting developments in 2022.

One of the great criticisms of space tourism is its cost; it’s prohibitively expensive for most people and thus feels inaccessible. In fact, there are ways to bring space into your life in 2022 — even if you’re not taking yourself to space (or the edge of it). Here are five ways to experience space tourism in the coming year, from budget-friendly to budget blow-out.

For a low-cost, accessible, outdoors, and distance-friendly way to bring more space into your life in 2022, consider attending a dark sky festival. Many of these events were canceled in 2020 and/or 2021, but some great dark sky destinations have figured out how to have safe outdoor under-the-star experiences.

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British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has become the first spaceline to get the go-ahead from the FAA to take up space tourists — a huge milestone in recreational spaceflight.

Space tourists: For decades, only governments could afford to launch people into space, but thanks to reusable rockets and other advances, spaceflight is now cheaper than ever.

That’s led to a burgeoning space tourism industry, with dozens of companies looking to take people on recreational trips into space — or at least the edge of it.