Lifeboat Foundation

This strange looking bench moves like a wave.

Expedition 65 — NASA Astronaut Megan McArthur and ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet answer questions from the Children’s Museum of Saratoga.

SPACE STATION CREW DISCUSSES LIFE IN SPACE WITH STUDENTS AT U.S EMBASSY IN BULGARIA

Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 65 Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) discussed life and work aboard the complex during an in-flight event July 26 where they answered pre-recorded questions from students. Vande Hei and Pesquet launched within weeks of each other in April on Russian Soyuz and SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicles respectively for their missions on the orbital outpost.

Anthony Rapp (actor, Star Trek: Discovery) joins Dr. John Mather (astrophysicist), Dr. Ann Nguyen (planetary scientist), Dr. Laura Kerber (planetary scientist), and Dr. Allegra LeGrande (physical research scientist) to discuss how NASA’s research and missions help us understand how our universe, our solar system, and our Earth came to be.

Take a trip with us to the center of Mars! NASA’s InSight Lander has detected hundreds of quakes with its seismometer since landing on the Red Planet in November 2018. Those seismic events have shed light on the crust, mantle, and core of the planet, as well as how the separate layers formed. Those findings may offer insight into how all rocky planets formed, including Earth.

Speakers:
• Mark Panning, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
• Amir Khan, ETH Zurich and University of Zurich.
• Sabine Stanley, Johns Hopkins University.

The “Nauka” Multifunctional Laboratory Module executed an unplanned firing of its thrusters on 29 July 2,021 starting at about 16:34 UTC, causing the International Space Station to move out of orientation. The ground controllers quickly regained attitude control and the motion of the ISS is now stable. Joel Montalbano (manager, NASA’s International Space Station Program) explains the situation.

Credit: NASA

When Gene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt climbed into their lunar module nearly 50 years ago at the end of the Apollo 17 mission, it marked the end of an era. The Apollo 17 crew would splash down in the Pacific Ocean a few days later, marking the end of humanity’s presence on the Moon for the foreseeable future. A new age of space exploration was ushered in with the launch of the first space shuttle in 1981. The shuttle program had its own set of triumphs, notably the launch and subsequent repairs of the Hubble Space Telescope. But the pursuit of so-called deep space exploration via crewed missions — including a return to the Moon — did not seem imminent, replaced instead with a series of missions involving uncrewed probes in deep space and crewed missions closer to Earth.

The idea of returning humankind to the Moon dawned again in 2,017 with the official unveiling of NASA’s Artemis program. In mythology, Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo. As the program’s namesake implies, a chief goal of Artemis is to see humans once again on the surface of the Moon, including the first woman and first person of color. NASA believes Artemis is a monumental shift in deep space exploration that, along with subsequent missions, will culminate with an achievement well beyond the lunar surface: landing humans on the surface of Mars.

But first, the Moon, and to get back there, NASA is developing an ambitious series of components designed to expand exploration of the lunar surface. It’s called the Gateway, and a Notre Dame alumnus is helping to get the lunar outpost — literally — off the ground.

In April, NASA’s ‘Ingenuity’ aircraft made history when it became the first drone to take-off, fly, and land in the atmosphere of another planet. Watch Anderson Cooper fly the terrestrial version: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-drone-mars-60-minutes-2021-08-01/

When SpaceX deploy batches of Starlink satellites they drop them off in lower orbits and expect the satellites themselves to navigate towards their final operational orbits. This is quite a complex process and one that’s worth discussing, the satellites need to be able to reach the target orbital plane, raise the orbit to operational altitude, and then finally maneuver to a specific slot within that plane before they become operational.

Satellite Orbital Maps by Celestrak.
https://celestrak.com/

Continue reading “How Do Starlink Satellites Navigate To Their Final Operational Orbits” »