Kathy Lueders, the first woman to lead NASA’s human spaceflight program, will helm the agency’s return to the moon.
Dragon to the Moon?
The following memo was sent by the author to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and Scott Pace, executive secretary of the National Space Council, on June 30, 2020.
A mission equivalent to Apollo 8—call it “Artemis 8”—could be done, potentially as soon as this year, using Dragon, Falcon Heavy, and Falcon 9.
The coming two decades are scheduled to be very interesting decades for human space exploration and colonization. One of the things on America’s agenda for space exploration is creating humanity’s first Mars base, which will most likely happen in the 2030s and 2040s. If you are interested in what this Moon base will look like, please take a look at this video!
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“I have seen my fair share of spacecraft being lifted onto rockets,” said John McNamee, project manager for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “But this one is special because there are so many people who contributed to this moment. To each one of them I want to say, we got here together, and we’ll make it to Mars the same way.”
With the mating of spacecraft and booster complete, the final testing of the two (separately and as one unit) will be underway. Then two days before the July 30 launch, the Atlas V will leave the Vertical Integration Facility for good. Traveling by rail, it will cover the 1,800 feet (550 meters) to the launch pad in about 40 minutes. From there, Perseverance has about seven months and 290 million miles (467 million kilometers) to go before arriving at Mars.
SpaceX and NASA have been working together to develop a means to transport humans to and from the International Space Station.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A company wants to use an advanced balloon to fly customers from Earth’s surface in Alaska to the highest reaches of the planet’s atmosphere.
Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune, The Anchorage Daily News reported Sunday.
The balloon rides will be manned by a flight crew taking eight passengers in a pressurized capsule suspended beneath a hydrogen balloon the size of a football stadium.
Mid-July will see three spacecraft launch to Mars, but if they miss their tight two-week launch windows they’ll have wit until September 2022 for another go.
Optical frequency synthesizers – systems that output laser beams at precise and stable frequencies – have proven extremely valuable in a variety of scientific endeavors, including space exploration, gas sensing, control of quantum systems, and high-precision light detection and ranging (LIDAR). While they provide unprecedented performance, the use of optical frequency synthesizers has largely been limited to laboratory settings due to the cost, size, and power requirements of their components. To reduce these obstacles to widespread use, DARPA launched the Direct On-Chip Digital Optical Synthesizer (DODOS) program in 2014. Key to the program is the miniaturization of necessary components and their integration into a compact module, enabling broader deployment of the technology while unlocking new applications.
To accomplish its goals, DODOS is leveraging advances in microresonators – tiny structures that store light in microchips – to produce optical frequency combs in compact integrated packages. Frequency combs earn their name by converting a single-color input laser beam into a sequence of many additional colors that are evenly spaced and resemble a hair comb. With a sufficiently wide array of comb “teeth,” innovative techniques to eliminate noise become possible that make combs an attractive option for systems needing precise frequency references.
Until recently, creating frequency combs from microresonators was a complex affair that required sophisticated control schemes, dedicated circuitry, and oftentimes, an expert scientist to carefully observe and fine-tune the operation. This is primarily due to the sensitive properties of the microresonator, which needs the perfect amount of light at a special operating frequency – or color – to be provided by an input laser in order for the comb to turn on and even then, producing a coherent or stable comb state could not be guaranteed every time.
EVANSTON, Ill.— Packing for outer space? Here’s one thing you won’t want to forget.
Northwestern University researchers have synthesized a new form of melanin enriched with selenium. Called selenomelanin, this new biomaterial shows extraordinary promise as a shield for human tissue against harmful radiation.
“Given the increased interest in space travel, and the general need for lightweight, multifunctional and radioprotective biomaterials, we’ve become excited about the potential of melanin,” said Northwestern’s Nathan Gianneschi, who led the research. “It occurred to our postdoctoral fellow Wei Cao that melanin containing selenium would offer better protection than other forms of melanin. That brought up the intriguing possibility that this as-yet undiscovered melanin may very well exist in nature, being used in this way. So we skipped the discovery part and decided to make it ourselves.”
The Falcon 9, SpaceX’s most commonly-used rocket, has completed another successful droneship landing.
