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Category: space travel – Page 291

11 Female Astronauts Who Pioneered Spaceflight

With a variety of backgrounds and talents, these women have helped push the boundaries of spaceflight.

Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya.

Spacefacts.de

Svetlana Savitskaya was just the second woman to reach space. She was also a record-breaking jet pilot. Savitskaya was born in Moscow in 1948, and likewise started skydiving as a teenager. Her father, a high-ranking officer in the Soviet military, was allegedly unaware of her skydiving exploits. However, he soon supported her passion for flying jets, and Savitskaya quickly found herself competing in aerobatic competitions.

What Martian Settlers Need to Know About Soil Can Teach us How to Grow Better on Earth

Article from Universetoday. Interesting read.

When human beings start living in space for extended periods of time they will need to be as self-sufficient as possible. The same holds true for settlements built on the Moon, on Mars, and other bodies in the Solar System. To avoid being entirely dependent on resupply missions from Earth (which is costly and time-consuming) the inhabitants will need to harvest resources locally – aka. In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU).

This means they’ll have to procure their own sources of water, building materials, and grow their own food. While the ISS has allowed for all kinds of experiments involving hydroponics in space, little has been done to see how soil fares in microgravity (or lower gravity). To address this, Morgan Irons – Chief Science Officer of the Virginia-based startup Deep Space Ecology (DSE) – recently sent her #id=8305″] Soil Health in Space experiment to the ISS.

The experiment, Determination of Gravitational Effects on Soil Stability for Controlled Environment Agriculture, was sponsored through Morgan’s fellowship with the Norfolk Institute – which provided grant funding from numerous companies (including DSE). An agreement between Norfolk Institute and Rhodium Scientific, LLC (an official space-flight implementation partner of the ISS U.S. National Laboratory) provided access to the NASA launch opportunities and the ISS.

Infinity and Beyond — Episode 10: The Artemis Missions

Since the last manned landing in 1972, no humans have been back to the Moon. Now, NASA plans to change all that with Artemis, which aims to land the next man and the first woman on the lunar surface by 2024.

The Artemis program will take place in stages, from testing the spacecraft that will carry astronauts to the Moon to building Gateway, a space station in lunar orbit to serve as a midway point for long-term missions. Future astronauts will explore regions of the Moon humans have never visited, including its south pole, where water ice hides in shadowed craters.

In this episode of Infinity & Beyond, host Abigail Bollenbach takes you through the next space race to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX says it will ‘make its own laws on Mars’

“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonisation spacecraft, the parties recognise Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the governing law section states.

“Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

Space systems engineer Erwan Beauvois said SpaceX’s position was reminiscent of a declaration put forward by the Earthlight Foundation, a non-profit organisation committed to preparing for the expansion of humanity beyond Earth.

NASA’s International Partnerships, Artemis Team to Shape Lunar Exploration

« Today we announced the first in a series of upcoming commitments from our international partners to support our Artemis plans. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have signed an agreement committing our space agencies to building the Gateway together. As our outpost in lunar orbit, the Gateway is critical for sustainable exploration of the Moon as well as testing systems and operations for future missions to Mars.

With this Memorandum of Understanding, ESA will provide an additional habitation element, enhanced lunar communications, and a refueling capability to the Gateway later this decade. They will also provide two more European service modules for future Orion spacecraft.

We are honored by this agreement with ESA and, again, it is one of several to come with our international partners. Exploration requires more than hardware though – and that is why this commitment with ESA includes opportunities for European astronauts to fly with NASA astronauts on future Artemis missions to the Gateway. »