Lifeboat Foundation

There’s no better way to kick-off Day 1 of the 2020 International Mars Society Convention than with a big announcement: SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk will be joining us virtually tomorrow (Friday, October 16th) at 3:00 pm PDT (6:00 pm EDT) [PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME] to provide our global audience with a special update about SpaceX and its plans for the Moon and Mars.

As a world leader in advocating for humanity to become a multi-planetary species, Mr. Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002 with the goal of creating affordable (reusable) launch vehicles and spacecraft to help open up exploration and settlement of the solar system, including the planet Mars.

To date, SpaceX achievements include the first privately funded liquid propellant rocket to reach orbit (Falcon 1, 2008), the first private company to launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft (Dragon, 2010), the first private company to send a spacecraft to the ISS (Dragon, 2012), the first vertical take-off and vertical propulsive landing of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9, 2015) and the first private company to send astronauts to orbit and to the ISS (Crew Dragon Demo-2 Mission, 2020).

“Will be less roomy with 3 vacuum rocket engines added.”

And more countries could be signing soon.

NASA released the draft of the accords to other space-faring countries, and after getting their input, the agency came up with the final document, which includes standards for things like lunar mining and how to handle conflicts on the Moon’s surface. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says the main goal is to get everyone on the same page about lunar exploration and head off any future international misunderstandings or conflicts. “When we think about the Artemis Accords, what we’re trying to do is establish norms of behavior that every nation can agree to,” Bridenstine said during a press call ahead of the announcement.

The seven nations that have signed along with the US are: Australia, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. NASA says that it has also spoken with other countries interested in signing, but these seven nations were able to go through the interagency process the fastest. That means more countries could be signing on to the accords very soon — even before the end of the year, according to NASA. “This first announcement is very much a beginning, not an ending to the nations joining the Accords,” Mike Gold, NASA’s acting associate administrator for the office of international and interagency relations, said during the briefing.

Continue reading “US and seven other countries sign NASA’s Artemis Accords to set rules for exploring the Moon” »

Partnership will use diagnostic imaging tools to explore health issues associated with microgravity, and apply this knowledge to patients on Earth.

The French Society of Radiology (SFR) and the country’s national centre for space exploration (CNES) have signed a partnership, details of which were streamed live at the Journées Francophones de Radiologie (JFR) congress on 4 October. The aim is to develop imaging solutions to be sent on space flights and to collaborate on image collection and optimization, teleradiology and training of astronauts.

France has the largest space program in Europe and the third oldest institutional space programme in history, along with Russia and the US. CNES, which has a long track record in space exploration, recognizes the great potential of diagnostic imaging for monitoring astronauts’ health while on missions, according to general director Lionel Suchet.

Continue reading “Radiologists and space experts to develop imaging tools for space missions” »

Esta producción, basada en el libro ‘Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future’, girará en torno a Musk y su trabajo en SpaceX para impulsar los vuelos espaciales privados.

Elon Musk is among the few people on Earth that are working towards changing the course of humanity’s future in a drastic way. He founded SpaceX in 2002 to make life multiplanetary –colonize Mars. Since then, SpaceX has developed some of the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft. Throughout the years Musk’s bold ideas, ambitious goals, and ability to lead teams to achieve greatness has earned him a place in history. Hollywood actor Channing Tatum seems to be inspired by Musk’s space venture that he is now planning to produce an HBO drama television series about Musk and his journey at SpaceX.

According to Deadline reporters, who first reported the news, Tatum’s film production company, Free Association, will produce a six-episode scripted series. The story will be about how SpaceX started with a rocket that almost did not make it to orbit, to returning human spaceflight capabilites to the United States. “The project will be penned by Star Trek Beyond scribe Doug Jung based on Ashlee Vance’s book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, first published in 2017,” Deadline reports, “Free Association’s Tatum, Reid Carolin and Peter Kiernan will executive produce with Vance and Len Amato, HBO’s former President Of HBO Films, Miniseries & Cinemax.”

This will be the 13th New Shepard mission and the 7th consecutive flight for this particular vehicle (a record), demonstrating its operational reusability. N…

Blue Origin successfully completed the 13th New Shepard mission on October 13, 2020. New Shepard flew 12 commercial payloads to space on this mission, including the Deorbit, Descent, and Landing Sensor Demonstration with NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate under a Tipping Point partnership. This was the first payload to fly mounted on the exterior of a New Shepard booster rather than inside the capsule, opening the door to a wide range of future high-altitude sensing, sampling, and exposure payloads.

Continue reading “Replay — New Shepard Mission NS-13 Webcast” »

The mission was previously scheduled for 2:40 a.m. ET on October 31. The latest delay allows SpaceX to evaluate an issue with its Falcon 9 rocket engines during a recent test launch. The rocket’s gas generators demonstrated abnormal behavior, NASA said in a statement, though it didn’t specify what went wrong.

SpaceX aborted a scheduled launch of its Falcon 9 rocket on October 2 after a gas generator saw an unexpected rise in pressure.

This isn’t the first time SpaceX has delayed Crew-1, the company’s first official, contracted astronaut mission for NASA. The mission was originally slated to launch as early as September. It was pushed back until Halloween to better coordinate with the schedules of other cosmonauts and astronauts going to and from the ISS.

Circa 2018

In the 2015 movie “The Martian,” astronaut Mark Watney survives on Mars by growing potato plants in his own waste. The scenario is fictional, of course, but it underscores a real-world challenge for NASA: How can the space agency ensure an uninterrupted supply of safe, nutritious food for astronauts who are tens of millions of miles from the nearest supermarket?

The successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket marked a big step toward developing the technology needed to transport colonists to Mars, though the strategy for keeping them and deep-space astronauts fed remains a work in progress.

Continue reading “How recycled astronaut poop might sustain a mission to Mars” »