Lifeboat Foundation

The rise of commercial spaceflight companies such as SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace sparked the age of space tourism as the ultra-wealthy became able to buy a ticket for a rocket ride into space. Of course, there is a huge limit on tourism if there isn’t a place to stay in one’s intended destination, but that’s about to change in space. Bigelow has announced plans to build two space stations that will float in low-Earth orbit. The company has big plans for these space stations and ideas about who might pay to use them. Essentially, the stations will be like orbiting space hotels where astronauts and possibly even tourists might stay one day.

In a press release this week, Bigelow Aerospace announced that it has created a spin-off venture called Bigelow Space Operations, which will operate and manage two space stations that will serve as hotels. The company expects to launch both hotels in 2021, and it’s beginning to work toward building them this year. Bigelow describes the two space stations as “the largest, most complex structures ever known as stations for human use in space.”

The two stations are currently being referred to as B330-1 and B330-2, and they aren’t the only two that Bigelow Space Operations plans to build. The two space stations are inflatable and will provide shelter for up to six people in low-Earth orbit with about 12,000 cubic feet of living space.

How else will astronauts get a Big Gulp on their way to Mars?

The antimatter of science fiction vastly differs from the real-life antimatter of particle physics. The former powers spaceships or bombs, while the latter is just another particle that physicists study, one that happens to be the mirror image with the opposite charge of the more familiar particles.

Normally, scientists produce antimatter in the lab, where it stays put in an experimental apparatus for further study. But now, researchers are planning on transporting it for the first time from one lab to another in a truck for research. Elizabeth Gibney reports for Nature:

In a project that began last month, researchers will transport antimatter by truck and then use it to study the strange behaviour of rare radioactive nuclei. The work aims to provide a better understanding of fundamental processes inside atomic nuclei and to help astrophysicists to learn about the interiors of neutron stars, which contain the densest form of matter in the Universe.

Continue reading “Scientists Will Transport Antimatter in a Truck” »

The experiment was held near the isolated Israeli township of Mitzpe Ramon, whose surroundings resemble the Martian environment in its geology, aridity, appearance and desolation, the ministry said.

The participants were investigating various fields relevant to a future Mars mission, including satellite communications, the psychological affects of isolation, radiation measurements and search ing for life signs in soil.

Participant Guy Ron, a nuclear physics professor from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the project was not only intended to look for new approaches in designing a future mission to the Red Planet, but to increase public interest.

Continue reading “Israeli scientists complete a mock mission to Mars” »

Based on data from NASA’s K2 mission, an international team of scientists has confirmed nearly 100 new exoplanets. This brings the total number of new exoplanets found with the K2 mission up to almost 300.

“We started out analyzing 275 candidates, of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets. In turn, 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries,” said U.S. doctoral student Andrew Mayo at the National Space Institute (DTU Space) at the Technical University of Denmark. “This research has been underway since the first K2 data release in 2014.” Mayo is the main author of the work being presented in the Astronomical Journal.

The research was conducted partly as a senior project during his undergraduate studies at Harvard College. It also involved a team of international colleagues from institutions such as NASA, Caltech, UC Berkeley, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Tokyo. The Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 to hunt for exoplanets in a single patch of sky, but in 2013, a mechanical failure crippled the telescope. However, astronomers and engineers devised a way to repurpose and save the space telescope by changing its field of view periodically. This solution paved the way for the follow-up K2 mission, which is still ongoing as the spacecraft searches for exoplanet transits.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=uvWrirMnZEs

Divya Kumar is on the Microsoft Edge team; Tom Westray is on the Virgin Galactic team.

We’ve all stared into the depths of the night sky, identified far off planets, and the Milky Way; but only fewer than 600 people have traveled above and beyond Earth’s atmosphere and into space. At Virgin Galactic, our rocket scientists, engineers and designers from around the world are united in creating something new and lasting that could change that – the world’s first commercial spaceflights for private astronauts and science research. We’re on the edge of a golden age of space exploration, which has the potential to transform our business and personal lives in ways we can only yet imagine.

Continue reading “Virgin Galactic partners with Microsoft Edge to create an immersive web experience for aspiring astronauts” »

The first discovered interstellar visitor to our solar system has had a violent past, which is causing it to tumble around chaotically, a Queen’s University Belfast scientist has discovered.

Physicists have demonstrated accelerating light beams on flat surfaces.

Where acceleration has caused the beams to follow curved trajectories.

However, a new experiment has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible to demonstrate in a lab. For the first time in an expeirment, physicists have demonstrated an accelerating light beam in curved space. Instead of traveling along a geodesic trajectory (the shortest path on a curved surface) it bends away from this trajectory due to the acceleration.

Continue reading “For the First Time, Physicists Accelerated Light Beams in Curved Space in the Lab” »

A former senior executive of Russia’s United Rocket and Space Corporation has proposed to introduce a voluntary payment that would allow a fully independent national moon program as well as a new orbital research station.

The author of the proposal, Valentin Uvarov, is now an independent expert in the sphere of space research, but in 2014–2016 was head of the Directorate of Manned Space Complexes at the United Rocket and Space Corporation. In 2016–2017, Uvarov headed the Department of Commercial Projects in Manned Space Research at the same corporation.

In his open letter, published by the Izvestia daily, Uvarov wrote that according to his calculations the implementation of both the moon program and the new orbiting research station would cost the Russian budget about $38 billion or 2.13 trillion rubles. He then proposes to split to overall sum into 100 million parts (a very rough estimation of economically active people in the Russian Federation) and then introduce a schedule of equal monthly payments over the 15-year period. The result is a relatively modest 120 rubles per person per month or about $2.15.

Continue reading “Russian expert proposes nationwide voluntary ‘space fund’ for moon exploration” »