Future Guests on the ISS and Tiangong Space Station

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): China’s Tiangong space station. (The New York Times)

The CEO of the South African National Space Agency announced plans to send two female astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). It is something that the space agency hopes to accomplish in the next two years.

This latest announcement appears to be based on Russian efforts to parlay better relations with African nations. The Russian RT news recently stated:

Roscosmos announced plans last month to expand its space partnerships with African countries. According to its director, an agreement will be signed with a number of the continent’s nations at the Russia-Africa summit this week in St. Petersburg.

In other news, the Chinese Tiangong space station is also getting visitors – zebrafish. The fish are part of experiments to learn more about bone loss in astronauts. The news story goes on to note that the Russians were the first to use zebrafish in space back in 1976.

Russia is also Heading to the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Russia’s Luna-Glob-Lander. (https://www.russianspaceweb.com/)

As noted in an earlier post, India left for the moon’s south pole last week, but it won’t be alone for long. Russia is planning to launch its Luna-25 spacecraft, also called the Luna-Glob-Lander, next month. According to NASA, the mission has two primary scientific objectives at the Moon’s south pole:

  • to study composition of the polar regolith, and
  • to study the plasma and dust components of the lunar polar exosphere.

The last Luna mission was Luna-24 back in 1976 and involved the return of lunar samples to Earth.

The European Space Agency was planning to be part of this latest mission until the invasion of Ukraine, so Russia is on its own now.

I imagine simpler missions like this will be necessary if Russia plans to eventually build a moon base, though finding a partner may be tough. It is clear that the US and Russia are no longer in a neck-to-neck race back to the Moon. Only China seems to have the stamina to compete with NASA’s Artemis program, though the US is still in the lead for now.

The Luna-25 launch is planned for August 10 if all goes well.

ESA’s Euclid Space Telescope Safely Launched

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Credit: ESA

Earier today, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid Space Telescope was safely launched from Cape Canaveral on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket (though the original plan was to use a Russian Soyuz rocket until the invasion nixed that idea). The space telescope is destined for the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2), which is an average distance of 1 million miles beyond Earth’s orbit. It will join the James Webb Space Telescope.

In addition to the 1.2 meter diameter telescope, the mission includes two scientific instruments: a visible-wavelength camera (the VISible instrument, VIS) and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer (the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP). 

The focus of the new space telescope will be to create a 3D map of the universe to better understand dark matter and dark energy. As noted on the ESA’s website, Euclid hopes to answer these questions:

  • What is the structure and history of the cosmic web?
  • What is the nature of dark matter?
  • How has the expansion of the Universe changed over time?
  • What is the nature of dark energy?
  • Is our understanding of gravity complete?

It is a tall order for this new telescope. Astronomer Isobel Hook from the UK’s Lancaster University put it this way to BBC News:

It will be like setting off on a ship before people knew where land was in different directions. We’ll be mapping out the Universe to try to understand where we fit into it and how we’ve got here – how the whole Universe got from the point of the Big Bang to the beautiful galaxies we see around us, the Solar System and to life.

A Day in Astronomy: Sally Ride and Valentina Tereshkova

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Credit: The San Diego Union

On this day in 1983, astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, traveling aboard the shuttle Challenger. And 20 years earlier on the same date, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first Russian female in space, returned to Earth aboard Vostok 6, after orbiting the planet 48 times. She still remains the only woman to travel into space on a solo mission.

Image (Credit): Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (New Mexico Museum of Space History)

Podcast: Cool Worlds Labs Has Started a Podcast

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In an earlier posting, I noted that the people at Cool Worlds Lab were planning to create a podcast to further share the Lab’s research. Well, that day has come and you can now listen to the first episode with Professor David Kipping interviewing Rebecca Charbonneau, who is a Janksy Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). She is a historian of astronomy who is writing a book on the history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

The conversation covers a number of SETI topics, including a young Carl Sagan’s collaboration with Soviet astronomer I.S. Shklovsky on an English translation of Shklovsky’s book Universe, Life, Intelligence. It was a chance to escape Soviet censors and bring new light to SETI ideas.

It’s a great start to a new series. I look forward to many more podcast episodes in addition to all of the other great media shared by Cool Worlds Labs.

Credit: Emerson-Adams Press