February 7, 2021

Biography of a Non-Human Astronaut (Source: The Conversation)
On January 31, 1961, an intrepid chimpanzee called Ham was launched on a rocket from Cape Canaveral and returned to Earth alive. In this process, he became the first hominin in space. Throughout the journey Ham was obliged to pull a lever. He received two shocks for not doing this correctly, out of 50 pulls. He achieved this with a 16cm rectal thermometer in place to monitor his temperature. He experienced 6.6 minutes of free fall and 14.7_g_ of acceleration on descent – much greater than predicted. The biomedical data showed Ham experienced stress during acceleration and deceleration.

Jane Goodall, an expert in primate behaviour, said she had never seen such terror in a chimp’s expression. However, Ham was calm when weightless. Ham survived the flight itself, but nearly drowned when the capsule started filling with water after its ocean splashdown. Fortunately, the helicopter recovery team reached him in time. Ham’s treat on emerging from the spacecraft was an apple, which he devoured eagerly. Ham was born in 1957 in a rainforest in the Central African nation of Cameroon, then a French territory. He was captured and taken to an astronaut school for chimps at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

After his flight, Ham lived for 20 years by himself, in a zoo in Washington DC. People wrote him letters, and some were answered by zoo staff signed with Ham’s fingerprint. In 1980 he was sent to another zoo to live with a group of chimps. He died in 1983 at the age of 26. Ham’s spaceflight made him more than animal, but still less than human. A mere 10 weeks after Ham’s feat, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he orbited Earth on April 12. On November 26, Enos the chimp completed an orbit. (1/30)

Dragon Resilience To Break Five-Decade-Old Skylab 4 Record Tonight (Source: AmericaSpace)
At precisely 8:42:47 p.m. EST tonight (Sunday, 7 February), a new record will be set in the annals of U.S. human spaceflight, when Dragon Resilience—the vehicle which delivered Crew-1 astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi to the International Space Station (ISS), last November—passes 84 days, one hour, 15 minutes and 30 seconds in flight. In doing so, the hardy little SpaceX ship will eclipse Skylab 4’s almost-five-decade-old achievement for the longest single mission by an American crewed orbital spacecraft. (2/7)

Space Florida Executive Passes Away (Source: Space Florida)
Space Florida is deeply saddened to share news of the passing of James “Jim” Kuzma, USN (Retired) a dear friend and respected colleague. In his role as Senior Vice President and General Manager, he was responsible for handling industry and spaceport development for the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. But more than that, he was a friend, colleague and mentor who poured his heart and selfless style into the Space Florida team and its vision. (2/7)

Small But Mighty Space Force is No Joke (Source: The Gazette)
Don't pick on the little guy. That's what White House press secretary Jen Psaki learned last week as she tried to get a laugh out of the nation's newest and smallest armed service. While the Space Force has only 13,000 troops, giving even the diminutive Coast Guard a sister service to pick on, it has a role in America's future that could be even larger than its military cousins combined. America has already conquered dirt, water and air. Only the vastness of space delivers a new horizon. (2/7)

US Billionaires Vie to Make Space the Next Business Frontier (Source: Guardian)
For Jeff Bezos, competition in the stratosphere will be as tough as in retail. Rival billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX is arguably ahead of Blue Origin. Despite an uncrewed test flight last week ending in a fiery crash, SpaceX is already able to reuse its Falcon 9 rockets. Musk (no stranger to making and sometimes breaking bold promises) aims to fly to Mars as soon as 2024. Commercial companies now account for about 80% of the $424bn global space industry.

Most of the industry is focused on IT, but experts believe the billionaires’ efforts are about to usher in a new era, with the start of space tourism, manufacturing and more. Google co-founder Larry Page has backed Planetary Resources, a startup hoping to mine asteroids. It will be overdue in the eyes of many. Sir Richard Branson predicted that Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company he founded, would first fly in space in 2009. Nonetheless, despite false starts and a fatal crash in 2014, analysts at UBS say Virgin Galactic will in 2021 offer “the only way for consumers to gain entry into the [roughly] 560-member astronaut club in the next five years”. (2/6)

Tensions Rise as Rival Mars Probes Approach Their Final Destination (Source: Guardian)
The skies above Mars will witness some startling aeronautical displays in the next few days when three rival space robot probes reach the red planet after journeying for millions of miles across space. The United Arab Emirates’ probe Hope orbiter will arrive first, on Tuesday, followed by China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft the next day. Finally, the US rover Perseverance will make its dramatic descent to the surface of Mars on 18 February. It is a remarkable armada that reveals the growing desire of many nations to develop their own space technology and explore the solar system. Just how well they succeed when they reach their target this week and next remains to be seen, however. Mars is an unforgiving place to visit. (2/7)

What Dust From Space Tells Us About Ourselves (Source: Quanta)
If it wasn’t for the dust, our universe would be a pretty mundane place: flickering stars with nothing around them. The dust links stars with everything else, with all the planets, all the living things on those planets. It’s the dust that’s responsible, ultimately. In the 1990s, we had very little idea what objects in the solar system are producing all this dust. We eventually worked out that the micrometeorites arriving on Earth are largely coming from primitive asteroids. They’re similar to a type of meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites, which come from the most common type of asteroid — carbon-bearing “C-type” asteroids.

It has fallen on our planet all the way through our planet’s history. It’s fallen on Mars. It’s fallen on Venus. The origins of life may have something to do with cosmic dust, because it actually delivered most of the intact amino acids and organic molecules of the Earth during the Late Bombardment [about 4 billion years ago]. On Mars, if there is anything living in the Martian soil, it’s probably eating micrometeorites because that’s the main source of organic material to the Martian surface. You measure the amount of nickel in Martian soil and it’s several percent, and that nickel is mainly coming from micrometeorites. I like to think of them as micrometeorite munchies on the surface of Mars.

Even on Earth at the moment, micrometeorites are important in terms of the delivery of nutrients. The deepest, most remote parts of the ocean are so far removed from land that they receive very little terrestrial dust, and living organisms need a range of trace elements like iron in order to survive. And actually most of the iron delivered to the southern Atlantic and parts of the Southern Ocean are coming from micrometeorites. (2/4)

Meet the Billionaire Commanding SpaceX’s All-Civilian Mission—He Dropped Out of High School to Start His Business (Source: CNBC)
“I decided I was going to go to space when I was 5 [years old]. I was pretty calculated about it at that point, it just took me a little while to get it into motion,” says Isaacman, the founder of Shift4 Payments. The self-proclaimed “space geek,” who has an estimated net worth of $2.3 billion, according to Forbes, declined to reveal how much the endeavor will cost him. Isaacman has already committed $100 million to St. Jude’s. And 30-second Super Bowl ad spots are reportedly going for around $5.5 million this year. That’s not to mention the trip, for which he is covering all four crew seats.

Whatever the bill, Isaacman believes it’s a small price to pay. “This is the first step towards a world where everybody can go and venture among the stars,” he says. For the past two decades, Isaacman’s main focus has been running the company he founded as a teenager in his parents’ basement in New Jersey. As a teen, Isaacman and his friend, Brendan Lauber, spent much of their free time fixing computers and building websites, so they decided to try and make some money with their skills. One of his clients was Mario Parisi, the CEO of a payment processing company.

Parsi was so impressed by Isaacman’s work clearing the company’s network of viruses that he offered him a job as an in-house IT consultant. Isaacman dropped out of high school and took the job — though, his parents had just one condition. After just six months at MSI, though, Isaacman had an idea that could allow him to start his own company — a payments processor that would make it easier for merchants to set up credit card terminals at their businesses without being buried in paperwork. (2/7)