NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy handed over station command today to Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov. Cassidy will return to Earth on Wednesday with two Expedition 63 crewmates. https://go.nasa.gov/2SWS3Ob.
Archive for the ‘space’ category: Page 556
Oct 20, 2020
Touchdown! NASA makes touchdown on asteroid Bennu to collect samples
Posted by Alberto Lao in categories: robotics/AI, space
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has made a historic touchdown on the asteroid Bennu, dodging boulders the size of buildings to collect samples from the surface for several seconds before safely backing away Tuesday evening.
The meticulous descent took 4.5 hours and by 6.12pm the spacecraft made touchdown where its 11-foot robotic arm acted like a pogo stick and bounced on the asteroid’s surface to collect dirt and dust before the craft launched back into space.
Continue reading “Touchdown! NASA makes touchdown on asteroid Bennu to collect samples” »
Unveiled by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab this week, this is the brand new DuAxel Rover 🚀 🙌
Oct 20, 2020
U.S. space mining policies may trigger regulatory ‘race to the bottom,’
Posted by Malak Trabelsi Loeb in categories: law, policy, space
In a newly published policy paper, a pair of Canadian scientists warn that the United States is angling to establish itself as the de facto gatekeeper of the moon and other celestial bodies.
Earlier this year, NASA published a new set of rules for lunar mining and other space activities, dubbing the voluntary guidelines the “Artemis Accords.”
Aaron Boley and Michael Byers, authors of the new Science paper, argue that the Artemis Accords are part of a concerted effort by the U.S. and NASA to set a legal precedent for space-based resource extraction.
This is how they measure an astronaut’s weight in space.
Astronaut David Saint-Jacques shows us how the ISS crew weigh themselves in space 👨🚀 👏
Oct 20, 2020
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe will snag a piece of an asteroid Tuesday! Here’s how to watch
Posted by Raphael Ramos in category: space
A probe will try to get a piece of an asteroid.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will grab a sample of an asteroid called Bennu on Tuesday, and the agency will be webcasting all the excitement.
Oct 19, 2020
NASA astronaut Christina Koch reflects on 1-year anniversary of first all-woman spacewalk
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
“It was such a momentous moment,” Christina Koch said.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch reflected on her participation in the first all-woman spacewalk ahead of its one-year anniversary on Sunday (Oct. 18).
Oct 19, 2020
Astronaut requirements changing rapidly with private spaceflyers, long-duration missions
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
Being an astronaut of the 2020s will be completely different than it was for any astronaut that came before, a panel of spaceflyers told the virtual International Astronautical Congress Wednesday (Oct. 14).
The spaceflight environment is rapidly changing due to several different factors. The International Space Station (ISS) is pushing harder into commercialization and will soon be welcoming more and larger space agency crews on commercial crew vehicles while bringing in a few private astronauts.
Oct 19, 2020
Impatient? A Spacecraft Could Get to Titan in Only 2 Years Using a Direct Fusion Drive
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: military, nuclear energy, space
Fusion power is the technology that is thirty years away, and always will be – according to skeptics at least. Despite its difficult transition into a reliable power source, the nuclear reactions that power the sun have a wide variety of uses in other fields. The most obvious is in weapons, where hydrogen bombs are to this day the most powerful weapons we have ever produced. But there’s another use case that is much less destructive and could prove much more interesting – space drives.
The concept fusion drive, called a direct fusion drive (or DFD) is in development at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). Scientists and Engineers there, led by Dr. Samuel Cohen, are currently working on the second iteration of it, known as the Princeton field reversed configuration-2 (PFRC-2). Eventually the system’s developers hope to launch it into space to test, and eventually become the primary drive system of spacecraft traveling throughout our solar system. There’s already one particularly interesting target in the outer solar system that is similar to Earth in many ways – Titan. Its liquid cycles and potential to harbor life have fascinated scientists since they first started collecting data on it.
Oct 19, 2020
Breathtaking Hubble Image Captures a Star That’s Still Being Born
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
Zooming in on a small corner of cloud 7,500 light-years away, the Hubble Space Telescope has caught a fascinating stage in the development of baby stars.
It’s called J025157.5+600606, and it’s just a (relatively) tiny bulge in the colossal Soul Nebula (also known as Westerhout 5) in the constellation of Cassiopeia.
But, while the section of cloud seems insignificant in the broader nebula complex to which it belongs, it’s an excellent place to learn about the birth of new stars.