Image (Credit): View of the International Space Station from a Crew Dragon spacecraft. (NASA)
“Mistakes are mistakes. It is a shame for all of us. This is space exploration and everyone understands that. It is experience that we can use in the future.”
-Statement by Russia’s President Putin, as reported by Reuters, addressing the Luna-25 crash on the Moon in August. He added that the lunar missions will continue. He also said Russia also hopes to have its first segment of a new space station in operation by 2027, stating, “As the resources of the International Space Station run out, we need not just one segment, but the entire station to be brought into service.”
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.
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 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.
I recently watched the movie A Million Miles Away after experiencing a summer with no blockbuster films addressing anything interesting related to space travel or alien life. I was happy that this new movie (available on Amazon Prime last month) addressed both, but the “alien” life related to migrant farmers seeking a better life in America.
You will quickly become hooked on the dreams of future astronaut José Hernández as he winds a narrow path to become a NASA flight engineer. You can see a clip of the film here.
The first hour of the film covers the story of his youth, education, and start of a family. After that, you are with him as he is tested by NASA trainers in a way that few of us can imagine. His story intertwines with the Shuttle Columbia disaster, which add another interesting and somber layer to his story.
The film is later interlaced with images of the actors and real persons, including images of José Hernández as he worked on the International Space Station.
Its a great story for the entire family. Yes, it is old story about following your dreams, but it also shows what other may sacrifice along the way to make the dreams of a child or spouse possible.
Rotten Tomatoes shows an Audience Score of 96 percent. I agree with the audience on this one.
How much does it cost to decommission a space station? Well, according to NASA as cited by London’s Daily Mail, it will cost at least $1 billion to ensure the International Space Station (ISS) finds a safe spot to crash. And NASA even has a name for the spacecraft that will be needed to steer the ISS into the Earth – the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) – because everything needs an fancy acronym.
The ISS is not expected to disappear until 2031, but plans are underway to start the decommissioning process now. If you want to help build the USDV you have until November of this year to share your plans with NASA (see below and visit this link). Just as we have companies in a race to put humans on the Moon again, we will now have a race for the final days of the ISS.
And where will the ISS end up? In its Requiremenst for Request Information, NASA is asking for a “controlled reentry into an unpopulated region.” It appears the goal is to aim any burning remains at Point Nemo, which is a spot in the Pacific Ocean used many times for such purposes (see the diagram above).
The US apparently has plans for an ISS replacement. I just hope at least part of the new station is in orbit by 2031. We do not need a long gap with no space station. The gap between end of the space shuttle and the restart of US-controlled rocket missions to the ISS was far too long. We have time to get it right.
Image (Credit): The Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft blasts off to the ISS from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on September 15, 2023. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
Earlier today, US astronaut astronaut Loral O’Hara as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub departed from Kazakhstan on a Soyuz rocket that will take them to the International Space Station (ISS). The space station will be crowded again until the three relieved crew members, including US astronaut Frank Rubio, can return to Earth.
