Space Stories: Fancy Space Suits, Giant Blinding Satellites, and More Russian Space Station Leaks

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Dezeen

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Dezeen: “Prada Designing Lunar Spacesuits for NASA Moon Mission“

Fashion house Prada has teamed up with commercial space company Axiom Space to create lunar spacesuits for NASA’s Artemis III mission, which will be the first crewed moon landing since 1972. Called Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), the suits will be designed to give astronauts “advanced capabilities for space exploration,” Prada said. They are an evolution of NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) spacesuit design and will use “innovative technologies and design” to be more flexible and provide more protection against the harsh lunar environment, according to the brand.

—Scientific American: “Giant Satellite Outshines Most Stars in the Sky“

On some nights, one of the brightest objects in the sky is neither a planet nor a star. It is a telecommunications satellite called BlueWalker 3, and at times it outshines 99% of the stars visible from a dark location on Earth, according to observations reported today in Nature. BlueWalker 3 is the most brilliant recent addition to a sky that is already swarming with satellites. The spaceflight company SpaceX alone has launched more than 5,000 satellites into orbit, and companies around the globe have collectively proposed launching more than half a million satellites in the coming years — a scenario that astronomers fear could hamper scientific observations of the Universe.

—The Guardian: “Third Space Station Leak in a Year Prompts Doubts About Russia’s Programme“

The Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) has sprung its third coolant leak in under a year, raising new questions about the reliability of the country’s space programme even as officials said crew members were not in danger. Flakes of frozen coolant spraying into space were seen in an official live feed of the orbital lab provided by Nasa on Monday, and confirmed in radio chatter between US mission control and astronauts. “The Nauka module of the Russian segment of the ISS has suffered a coolant leak from the external (backup) radiator circuit, which was delivered to the station in 2012,” Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Telegram, adding temperatures remained normal in the affected unit.