Our Earth ‘Michael Jackson’
via The Film Artist

My wonderful niece asked me to make this version of my last Earthlapse film to appeal to her generation a litle more. Compiled from 20k+ photographs, I have added a few more timelapses and re-edited it to make this full screen version. Michael Jackson was truly an enlightened and good soul, enjoy! :) Please join our new Nasa Timelapse Club

Chris Hadfield and Don Pettit are instrumental in saving the space programme…

(Source: asonlynasacan, via for-all-mankind)

ISS Astronauts Returned Safely to Earth.

“After inspiring all of us on Earth, Commander Chris Hadfield and crew have finally re-joined us here. The Soyuz space capsule landed safely at 10:31 PM EDT in Kazakhstan. Hadfield had spent 144 days on the ISS, 2,336 orbits around the planet and totaled up around 62 million miles. That’s a lot of miles!

The Soyuz capsule landed vertically, which is the preferred position. The crew, which includes Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, are back on Earth and reportedly all feeling good as they re-adjust to the gravity. Marshburn was one of the astronauts who performed the awe-inspiring emergency spacewalk to fix the leak of ammonia coolant two days ago.

The landing of the capsule comes a little over three hours since the capsule undocked from the ISS. It marks the end of the ISS’ Expedition 35 Crew in space. The crew will head over to the medical tent to get all properly tested and fixed for normal Earth life. Or as normal life can be in the eyes of men who were in space.” via Gizmodo

“On Sunday, Hadfield handed over command of the space station to Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov.

As part of his personal farewell to the space station, Hadfield released a video of his version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, which NASA said is the first music video made in space.” via CBC

(Source: thescienceofreality)

NASA Connects Space Station and “Star Trek Into Darkness” Crews

Science fiction and science fact come together for an epic Google+ Hangout live with the Space Station and the director, a writer and some actors in the film “Star Trek Into Darkness.” Join the discussion from noon to 12:45 p.m. EDT, May 16, about how work aboard the International Space Station is turning science fiction into reality. http://go.nasa.gov/13i9DII

(Source: spaceplasma, via spaceplasma)

Astronauts, Space Walks and The ‘Overview Effect’

Nearly everyone is familiar with EVA’s (Extra-Vehicular Activities) or “Space Walks” - activities/tasks performed outside of a space craft by astronauts. However, since watching The Overview Effect when it first premiered, I haven’t come across a segment of interviews such as this.

This is a great tribute to the men and women who have actually stepped out into space and seen the Earth with their own eyes, only a thin sheet of protective material between their organic lenses and the natural beauty of our planet and universe.

Expect more of this. As humans progress above our atmosphere and further out into space, the psychological/neurological effects will become more widespread and unique to each individual, united by awe and humility. I encourage all of you to watch this 20-minute documentary, The Overview Effect, which truly exposes the cosmic perspective for what it is, which is solitary and distinctive to the human species. No one else in history has been able to grasp and articulate this perspective from the height of over 250 miles up from our planet’s surface.

We’ve speculated and verbally interpreted this viewpoint philosophically, psychologically, spiritually, historically and scientifically, but we now are able to share and partake in this human journey - via our ever-advancing technology - with other humans across the globe through multiple media forms; granting others such an experience, which, even for a moment, consumes our consciousness and peels back the layers of our biological, chemical, atomically-interwoven connectivity with all life on this planet and most probably, others.

Also, if you’re unfamiliar with entrepreneur/video game developer Richard Garriott, he is lesser-known as being the son of an astronaut. His father, Owen Garriott, lived on NASA’s Skylab/Spacelab-1 LEO facilities in the 70’s and 80’s. Richard Garriott’s lifelong dream was to follow in his father’s “bootsteps” and journey to space. Garriott underwent astronaut training in Star City where, with his Russian counterparts, he learned Russian (required as he flew abord the Soyuz craft) and via Space Adventures, became the first private citizen to venture into space and perform science experiments on board the International Space Station.

Since then, Richard Garriott has become the Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors for Space Adventures and trustee of the X-Prize Foundation, which we are all familiar with. The film not only excites with gorgeous photography/cinematography, but also educates, revealing the cultural significance and processes by which Russian astro/cosmonauts partake and endure along their journey to space.

His mission, from beginning to end, was documented and produced into a film, aptly entitled, “Man On A Mission.” Free up some time to watch this and share it with others. The more humans that venture into space, the more humans we will have returning to Earth (or not) sharing their experience and the importance of spaceflight upon our civilization and our psyche.

Ad Astra Per Aspera.

Gifs from Chris Hadfield’s Space Oddity [X]

Respect and love to this man. One of the finest commanders the ISS has seen and which we’ve all shared in his journey. Thank you, Sir Chris Hadfield, for your amazing photography and continual public outreach for the scientific community. Humanity (and Canada) salute you.

(Source: avengetheangels, via applepiesfromscratch)

NASA Announces Giant Inflatable Extension to ISS

Wired.co.uk Update: We’ve heard back from Bigelow Aerospace’s Mike Gold, who has confirmed for us that — contrary to earlier reports — the inflatable extension to the ISS will not be on the scale of the BA-330 module. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (Beam) will weigh 1,360kg, with a length of four metres and diameter of three metres. It will be based on the Genesis II prototype that is currently in orbit around the Earth (mentioned in the article below), and will be launched in 2015 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of a general ISS resupply mission.

The Beam will be the first inflatable module that will be occupied by humans, with astronauts taking measurements over a period of two years as they test its ability to handle the environment of space. By late 2016 Bigelow also plans to have placed two BA-330 modules into orbit, to form what they call their Alpha Station — a private space station that customers will be able to rent out at the price of $25 million (£15.6 million) for two months’ use of 110m3 of space. Taxiing astronauts on a SpaceX rocket will be at least $26 million per journey and 60-day stay, while naming rights for the Alpha Station will also be going for (you guessed it) $25 million per year.

Gold said: “Expandable habitats are an enabling technology that will make the dream of robust beyond lower-earth-orbit human space exploration a reality. Our habitats not only represent a better choice in terms of enhanced capability and safety, but by dramatically lowering costs, a system like the BA-330 holds the key to making beyond lower-Earth orbit human space exploration physically and financially possible. The BA 330 and expandable habitats will not just offer enhanced protection from radiation and micrometeorites, but protect future astronauts from a much more dangerous threat, lack of funding.”

Original Article: The International Space Station is set to triple in size with an inflatable extension module, according to Nasa. While the exact details of the new module haven’t been revealed yet — a press conference is scheduled for 16 January for that — the contract is known to be worth $17.8 million (£11 million) to Bigelow Aerospace, who specialise in building inflatable spacecraft.

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module will be based on the the company’s BA-330 habitat modules, two prototypes of which are currently orbiting Earth after being launched in 2006 and 2007. The BA-330’s advantage over the current ISS living module is that it’s much wider and larger — it’s 330m3 by itself, which is almost half the 837m3 in the ISS so far. It’s also spread out in a much larger central room rather than along thin corridors like in the ISS, which would allow for greater flexibility for conducting experiments. If the new module is based on Bigelow’s BA-2100 prototype, though, that could mean an extra 2100m3, effectively adding triple the current size of the ISS with just one new module.

It might seem madness to make a spaceship out of something inflatable, but Bigelow claim that in tests their vectran skins are actually more resistant to being pierced than Nasa’s solid aluminium casings, with projectiles which pierced through metal of similar thickness to that found on the ISS only getting halfway through the inflatable skin. Inflatable skins made of vectran have another advantage, too, in that they reduce the amount of radiation astronauts receive. When metal gets hits by solar radiation it can get excited and also emit radiation, but non-metallic spaceship walls made of materials like vectran don’t, which is good news for astronauts. That’s partly the reasoning behind the idea of using inflatable buildings to house supercomputer complexes on the moon, as proposed by Ouliang Chang.

Nasa does have its own inflatable technology — Wired.co.uk reported last year on some inflatable kevlar heat shields that the space agency has been testing for future space missions. Inflatable technology makes a lot of sense for space travel as it could lead to much lighter payloads, and experiments have been conducted with the technology since the 1950s.

It’s only recently that inflatable tech has become strong enough to be a realistic option, though, and the claims being made about it are certainly eye-catching — Bigelow’s largest module, the BA-2100, may be six times larger than the BA-330 but is apparently weighs only 63.5 tonnes, which is within the capacity of the next generations of rockets currently under development. The ability to deploy entire space stations using a single rocket could create a market for them in the same way that companies like SpaceX have begun finding it economical to develop and launch their own rockets.

Bigelow and SpaceX announced in May 2012 that they would aim to launch their own independent Bigelow Commercial Space Station by 2015, with the intention of using it as a destination for space tourists. The ISS module will be specifically for further experiments on the ISS, though, according to Nasa’s Lori Garver, who said: “This partnership agreement for the use of expandable habitats represents a step forward in cutting-edge technology that can allow humans to thrive in space safely and affordably, and heralds important progress in US commercial space innovation.”

The ISS is currently budgeted to run until 2020, and while it will probably run for longer than that the next generation of space stations will begin to appear in orbit and supplant its role as the one permanent human settlement outside of the atmosphere — including Russia’s Opsek and China’s as-yet unnamed successor to the Tiangong project.

Chris Hadfield’s Mission Reflections.

I’m going to make a real effort to have a beer/30 minute convo with this man by the end of 2014. Committed!  

(Source: climateadaptation, via climateadaptation)

A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS ON CHRIS HADFIELD’S GIFT TO EDUCATION, COMMUNICATION & ACCESSIBILITY

You know my love for Chris Hadfield. You can see my first post about him here, “Reasons for Chris Hadfield”.

In my opinion, he is the embodiment of the modern scientist. Someone who is not only a researcher, but at tentpole around which we can build science accessibility and education.

He went up an scientist, but he’s seemingly returned to Earth an icon of education and communication, of which the world has rarely seen.

I honestly don’t even know how I can even go to bed now without a “Tonight’s Finale” photo from Chris of the world.

And with that I want to thank Chris deeply for all that he’s given to us.

I want to also send two special shout outs

• To his son, Evan, for coordinating all these efforts, and making it possible for us to talk to an astronaut. Up in space. Forever far away, but seemingly closer than most scientists I’ve ever met. Thank you for making this a possibility.
• To the Canadian Space Agency, who I could not appreciate more. Exploration of space is not just about discovering the the final fronter, but about realizing what we as humans are fully capable of. Thank you for helping us all experience this.

MEDIA

• Above is Chris’ “Space Oddity” cover video which is INSTANTLY the greatest video ever made.
• Below is Chris talking about Social Media, something we all know and love.

• And HERE is a great article from the CBC on Chris, Evan and the Canadian Space Agency exploration of Social Media in space, and their plans for the future.

 

(via romkids)

Physics in the Gravity Trailer | by RHETT ALLAIN (Wired)

Let’s take a look at this trailer for the upcoming movie Gravity. I don’t know much, but it seems like it is about two astronauts dealing with some problems on the International Space Station. After watching this, my physics alert system went off. It might be a false alarm, so I will take a closer look.

Orbit Altitude

If you look at the Wikipedia page on the ISS, it lists the orbit altitude at 250 to 263 miles above the Earth. Here is a shot from the trailer.

Ok. I don’t know for certain this is the ISS in the trailer. I assume it is, but it could be some new space station. However, at “372 miles above the Earth” the ISS is much higher than it normally operates. I guess that’s ok – I mean this is a fictional story. I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be this high. I just don’t see why they would significantly change the altitude. Maybe there is some plot element regarding the altitude – but if not, this is just sad. Really, it isn’t difficult to look up the orbital characteristics of the ISS.

Well, there is one big difference with an increased altitude. The orbital period would be longer. Maybe that is important in the plot. Maybe.

Air Resistance in Orbit

This is a short trailer with short clips of things. This means that it’s not quite clear what’s going on in each scene. Let’s look at a few.

This shows part of the ISS exploding for some reason. I think this short clip is ok in that it has the debris expanding in all directions.

In this scene, there is stuff that is clearly getting pushed back by air. At a 372 mile altitude, there is still air – but very little. Even at the ISS’s current orbit, there is air resistance – and this is why the space station occasionally needs a reboost. But at that height, the air resistance wouldn’t do anything like this. The next scene shows material leaving trails, so perhaps the space station got much closer to the Earth.

Here is an astronaut hanging on to the ISS.

If you are just flying past the space station and you grab on to stop yourself, that would be it. You would stop. You wouldn’t keep getting pulled back. If the space station was low in the orbit with significant air resistance, then that could happen. However, I have a feeling that you would have to be pretty low to get some serious forces as depicted in this scene.

Homework

Clearly, I don’t have any definite answers here. So, instead I will give homework questions. That’s what I do.

Estimate the drag force on the ISS at its current orbit altitude. Here is a hint. If you increased the altitude to 327 miles, how would the air drag force change?

What would the density of air have to be for an astronaut to experience an air drag force of about half the astronaut’s weight on the surface of the Earth?

Suppose re-entry starts at an altitude of 200 miles (I just guessed). What is the change in energy (both kinetic and gravitational potential) for an ISS going from an altitude of 372 miles to 200 miles? (sorry for using miles – but that’s what it lists in the video).

Let me point out one more thing. Why did I even start this post in the first place? After my first pass of the trailer, I was afraid that there was a very wrong misconception. The common idea is that when you knock something off of a fast moving object, that knocked off thing will slow down. This is indeed what happens to a fast moving air plane. The debris falls back due to an interaction with the air. However, in high orbits the air drag is quite small. This means that if you knock something off the ISS, it will basically just stay there.

After examining the trailer again, I’m not sure this problem is in the short clip. It seems that all of the objects moving past the ISS are due to some type of re-entry. I guess I will have to wait for the movie or another trailer to really find out what is going on.

NASA will webcast two major events today, a Skylab anniversary at 2:30 pm ET (18:30 GMT) and a Soyuz landing tonight.

(Source: knowledgethroughscience, via knowledgethroughscience)

To celebrate Commander Chris Hadfield’s return to earth today, Monday, May 13, Scientific American has collected the Top 10 Commander Hadfield Videos from the International Space Station. Excellent watching all around.

Above: the most popular video on their list, Wringing out Water on the ISS - For Science. And a just-released bonus vid below, the Commander’s version of David Bowie’s 1969 Space Oddity:

It’s the first music video made in space.

(Source: thekidshouldseethis.com)

We Need To Tackle Mars Dust Before Launching Manned Mission

Manned missions to Mars could be scuppered by the tiniest of annoyances — dust. A team of space safety experts repeatedly flagged up the issue at the Humans 2 Mars Summit (H2M) in Washington DC, according to a report by the New Scientist.

The conference is a highly reputable one, attended by the likes of Nasa chief Charles Bolden. Its focus is on debating the main obstacles we need to overcome in order to send humans to Mars by 2030. Now, with more than 20,000 people applying (and paying) for the chance to go to the Red Planet for Mars One’s reality TV show, the possibility of toxic dust is probably going to be one giant addition to any disclaimer the hopeful astronauts have to sign.

Dust, as we all know, gets everywhere. If you’ve ever been in a Khamsin — the hot, dry, dusty seasonal winds that blow in the Middle East — you’ll know it’s fairly unpleasant. It gets in your eyes, your clothes and your throat grows hoarse from swallowing it. Earthly dust we can deal with, but it turns out dust on the Red Planet has the potential to do far more than irritate.

Nasa chief medical officer Richard Williams, Paragon Space Development cofounder Grant Anderson, Curiosity Rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) principle investigator Paul Mahaffy and Boeing engineer and technical lead for the Environmental Control and Life Support System on the ISS Greg Gentry painted a picture of an inhospitable Mars where the dust is potentially inescapable. They pointed to serveral examples from Mars itself, and from Moon missions, that support this assumption.

Most recently Curiosity scooped up a robotic handful of Mars dust from Rocksnest that Mahaffy believes contains perchlorates. It’s something that was previously picked up by Nasa’a Phoenix lander on Mars in 2008 near the planet’s north pole. Perchlorates are salts that in large quantities can interrupt iodine uptake in the thyroid gland, and thus potentially interfere with the normal release of hormones.

Curiosity’s Chemcam also took samples from veins in the YellowKnife region and found high levels of calcium sulfate that it is predicted exist in the form of bassanite or gypsum. We have gypsum here on Earth, where it’s commonly used in plaster or fertilisers, but we don’t know how much there is on Mars’ surface.

“Gypsum is not really toxic per se, but if you breathe it in you do start to see a build-up in the lungs that’s equivalent to the coal-dust lung experienced by miners,” said Anderson. “That leads to breakdowns in lung capacity.”

Of course astronauts heading to Mars on a one-way trip will be in space suits any time they’re wandering round the planet’s surface, but our trips to the Moon show how impossible it is to keep dust off those suits. Reports from Apollo missions in the late 60s and early 70s revealed what a pain the dust was for explorers. It was so sharp it would wear through their outer gloves and would stick to everything, and it reportedly even caused “lunar hayfever”.

Part of it was down to the dust’s spiky surface, but a large part was also down to how static it was. UV rays and solar winds manipulate electron levels by day and night, powering up dust’s electrostatic charge. Wetting surfaces to wipe it off only made the dust stick more firmly. It’s like the silicate minerals all over Mars’ surface — if they mix with water in human lungs, they will become more damaging, combining to create dangerous chemicals.

Anderson predicts Mars dust will also be charged up, and that it will be nearly impossible to stop them entering a safe site through the airlocks where astronauts acclimatise back to normal conditions.

“The Apollo programme spent $17 million (£11 million) trying to solve their lunar dust problems, and I’m not sure they made much progress, because they had to do the tests on Earth,” said Anderson. “For Mars, the precursor robotic missions should all have some way to test how dust is going to kill you.”

According to a blog in the Washington Post Gentry commented that astronauts aboard the ISS spend most of their time making sure instruments, filters and surfaces are clean — “we are happy when we get 30 hours of science out of the crew a week,” he said.

So for now, it looks like Dyson needs to get to work on a spaceworthy air purifier.

The sun rising over the South Pacific as seen from the International Space Station. Thanks NASA!

Stay Curious | Watch Brian Cox present one of the most beautiful and important Wonders of the Solar System as he travels 18km above the surface of the Earth beyond the atmosphere to The Thin Blue Line.

(Source: govtoversight, via govtoversight)

It’s Time to Get Serious About Going to Mars, NASA Says

If NASA is to land humans on Mars by the 2030s, as President Barack Obama has directed, there’s not much time to settle on a plan and develop the technologies required, agency officials said Monday (May 6).

In the 1960s, America seized an opportunity to go to the moon, and succeeded. A second opportunity for a leap forward in space is upon us now, said NASA chief Charles Bolden at the Humans 2 Mars Summit here at George Washington University.

“Interest in sending humans to Mars I think has never been higher,” Bolden said. “We now stand on the precipice of a second opportunity to press forward to what I think is man’s destiny — to step onto another planet.” [Buzz Aldrin’s Visions for Mars Missions & More (Video)]

Yet the road to Mars is long and challenging, and the difficulties are scientific, technological, political and economic, experts said.

Of Launches and Landings
Sending astronauts to the Red Planet will likely require at least three missions: one to launch the crew and the vehicle that will take them to Mars, one to launch the habitat humans will live on at the planet’s surface, and one to launch the vehicle that will lift off from Mars to take the crew home, said Doug Cooke, a former NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate who now heads a space consulting firm.

Overall, about 200 to 400 metric tons of equipment will have to be launched from Earth’s surface for the project — a mass roughly equivalent to that of the International Space Station. And about 40 metric tons of that mass will have to be delivered to the surface of Mars at one time. So far, NASA has been able to land only 1 metric ton at a time — a feat recently accomplished in nail-biting fashion when the agency landed the Curiosity rover last summer.

While this phase, called Mars entry, descent and landing, will be one of the most challenging elements of the mission, at least as difficult is the return, when the astronauts will have to lift off from the surface of Mars and travel home. [Missions to Mars: Robotic Invasion of Red Planet (Infographic)]

“To me this is one of the biggest challenges,” said Mike Raftery, director of space station utilization and exploration at Boeing, the primary contractor for NASA’s heavy-lift rocket being developed to go to Mars. “We have to essentially land a launch pad on the surface that’s then ready to launch the crew back to Earth.”

Watch: Flying To Mars - How Long Does It Take?

Living Off The Land
In addition to the launch system, Mars crews will have to bring their own life-support systems, medicine, food, communications systems and navigation equipment. Yet the space travelers won’t be able to pack everything they’ll need. Instead, they will have to take advantage of some of the resources on Mars, such as water and oxygen for breathing, drinking and other needs. However, the technologies needed to extract and use such resources don’t yet exist.

“We’re going to have to rely on being able to live off the land,” said James Reuther of NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist. “Those will require significant technology investments in order to actually bring that about.”

Engineers must also develop a means of shielding astronauts from the dangerous radiation in space, both during the journey to the Red Planet and on the Martian surface, which lacks a strong enough atmosphere to protect from these damaging particles.

And to adequately plan for a human landing, additional precursor missions may also be necessary.

“It’s very likely that we’ll send some kind of lander or rover to the site we want to send people to first, to drill a couple meters down to tell us if we have fresh water,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate. Such a spacecraft could also serve as a beacon to guide the crewed lander down to the chosen spot on Mars.

Despite the complexity of all these challenges, NASA has a limited amount of time to plan its mission if it wants humans to arrive in the 2030s.

Ticking Clock
By 2020, engineers must choose an architecture for the mission, including what type of propulsion to use to get to Mars, and how many launches are required, said Sam Scimemi, NASA’s International Space Station director. It must also establish partnerships with any other nations it hopes to team with for the journey. By 2025, the design for all the major vehicles and technologies must be completed and frozen.

“That’s pencils down,” Scimemi said. “We don’t have a lot of time. If we’re going to get there we have to have a realistic approach from a budget, political and cultural standpoint.”

Still, many NASA and industry experts expressed confidence it can be done.

“In the coming days we have the opportunity to write history, to determine the future of humankind,” said Artemis Westenberg, president of Explore Mars Inc., the nonprofit space advocacy group that organized the conference. “We of Explore Mars give you this platform of this three-day summit. Now all you have to do is tell each other and the world the how” of getting to Mars.

You can watch the Humans 2 Mars Summit live on SPACE.com through May 8.