December 30, 2018

Russia May Use Genetic Method to Select Cosmonauts in Future (Source: TASS)
A genetic approach may be used in the future to select cosmonauts, Deputy Director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems within the Russian Academy of Sciences Lyudmila Buravkova said. "As for genetic research, two large platforms or two large areas can be singled out. The first area is the research into the human’s genetics from the viewpoint of using it in the selection… The second area is the attempt to remedy genetic errors as much as this should be done before a flight," the researcher pointed out.

Today the person’s health condition, the body’s reserves and its reaction to extreme impacts are basically scrutinized to select cosmonauts, the researcher said. "We can take a deeper look to see what is there at the genetic level," the scientist noted, adding that in this case the main thing is not to make a mistake because a human’s genetics is very complex and plastic. Any healthy person may have faulty genes that are offset by others, Buravkova said. (12/29)

Russian, US Scientists to Simulate Deep Space Flight Aboard Orbital Outpost (Source: TASS)
Russian and US scientists are planning to conduct an experiment with the crew’s partial isolation aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to simulate a deep space flight, Deputy Director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems within the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Kotov said on Saturday. During a flight to the Moon or a deep space flight, the crews will face the problem of prolonged self-dependence, the researcher said.

"This is one of serious problems because the current system of medical provision is based on contacts with Earth and the possibility to return," he pointed out. Considering that future flights will be fully self-dependent, all the resources and methods of medical provision should be aboard a spacecraft while cosmonauts should be ready to assume the entire burden of responsibility, the researcher noted. (12/29)

Mixed Gender Crews on Interplanetary Missions? Russian Scientists Say Yes (Source: TASS)
Women must be part of lunar and deep space missions, Director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Orlov told reporters. "From the standpoint of interplanetary flights, mixed gender crews are under consideration. Definitely," he said.

According to the Institute’s director, while implementing the SIRIUS (Scientific International Research In Unique Terrestrial Station) program, researchers are looking for ways to put together mixed gender crews. "We are studying the possibility of forming mixed gender teams since the matter concerns psychology, social relations, performance and so forth. This is what we are working on," Orlov noted. (12/29)

Russian Scientists to Study Hazards of Lunar Dust (Source: TASS)
Russian scientists will study the hazards of lunar dust for humans, Deputy Director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems within the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Sychyov said on Saturday. "The dust has the structure of the ‘hedgehog’ and if it gets into humans’ lungs, they won’t be able to get rid of it. This is very dangerous. The lunar dust has to be studied from the viewpoint of safety," the researcher said.

As Russia implements its Luna-Grunt (Moon-Soil) mission (scheduled for 2025), the institute’s scientists plan to obtain lunar dust samples for studies, Sychyov said. "In our application, we asked for the delivery of dust rather than simply soil to study its structure, chemical composition and generally get to know how hazardous it can be," he pointed out. Theoretically, the lunar soil can be used for creating greenhouses at lunar bases but this issue is not yet being considered because there is no sufficient amount of soil and it has not been studied thoroughly, the researcher said. (12/29)

2019 US Launch Manifest to Open with Delta IV Heavy and Falcon 9 Flights (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
The United States’ 2018 launch manifest came to a close with 34 orbital flights. 2019 looks to be just as busy with the first two missions poised to be spillover attempts from 2018. Initially, the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy with the classified NROL-71 payload was expected to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 6 in early December 2018. It is now slated to lift off no earlier than Jan. 6, 2019, and could be the opening global orbital flight of the year.

Meanwhile, a few miles north at Space Launch Complex 4E, SpaceX was initially planning to fly a potential 22nd Falcon family rocket — a Falcon 9 carrying the eighth and final Iridium NEXT mission. It was initially targeted for Dec. 30, but following SpaceX’s SSO-A launch from SLC-4E on Dec. 3, there was not going to be enough time to turn the pad around for a launch before the end of 2018. (12/30)

Our Universe: An Expanding Bubble in an Extra Dimension (Source: Uppsala University)
We have known for the past 20 years that the Universe is expanding at an ever accelerating rate. The explanation is the “dark energy” that permeates it throughout, pushing it to expand. Understanding the nature of this dark energy is one of the paramount enigmas of fundamental physics. It has long been hoped that string theory will provide the answer. According to string theory, all matter consists of tiny, vibrating “stringlike” entities. The theory also requires there to be more spatial dimensions than the three that are already part of everyday knowledge. 

For 15 years, there have been models in string theory that have been thought to give rise to dark energy. However, these have come in for increasingly harsh criticism, and several researchers are now asserting that none of the models proposed to date are workable. Scientists now propose a new model with dark energy and our Universe riding on an expanding bubble in an extra dimension. The whole Universe is accommodated on the edge of this expanding bubble. All existing matter in the Universe corresponds to the ends of strings that extend out into the extra dimension. 

The researchers also show that expanding bubbles of this kind can come into existence within the framework of string theory. It is conceivable that there are more bubbles than ours, corresponding to other universes. The Uppsala scientists’ model provides a new, different picture of the creation and future fate of the Universe, while it may also pave the way for methods of testing string theory. (12/27)

Lost in Space: They Paid $100,000 to Ride on XCOR's Spaceplane. Now They Want Their Money Back (Source: LA Times)
The story of Xcor and its ticket holders — 282 of them, as of the most recent count — is a cautionary tale for the space tourism age. In purchasing tickets for a brief bout of weightlessness at the fringes of space, would-be astronauts are placing the ultimate speculative bet. None of the space vehicles developed by the two major players, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, are fully operational yet. But some tourism firms have collected money upfront; Virgin Galactic’s price is as much as $250,000.

In the case of Xcor, the bet came up snake eyes. Its aspiring astronauts have been left grounded, wondering whether they’ll get a portion of their ticket price back. Steve Jones, 43, applied to be a creditor in Xcor’s bankruptcy case but has since learned he would not receive any funds. The ticket holder hired a lawyer, David Keesling, about a year and a half ago. Keesling said in an interview in November that there is “some slim” chance that funds could be recovered, but the number of entities involved in the case complicates the process.

Jones, a commercial pilot who lives in Tulsa, Okla., said scraping together the money for the Xcor ticket was a sacrifice. “I live in an apartment. I don’t drive the newest car,” he said. “That’s a lot of money. You’re talking kids’ college or buying a house.” U.S. Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee Jeffrey Vetter referred questions about the Xcor customers’ escrow accounts to the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokeswoman said in a November email that information about the escrow accounts was “not of the public record in this pending matter.” (12/30)

India Has Greenlit Rs 10,000 Crore For ISRO's First Manned Mission To Space In 2022 (Source: India Times)
The Union Cabinet today approved the budget for an ambitious space mission in 2022. The Gaganyaan, will be India's first manned mission in history, making us the fourth nation to ever do so. And the cash being thrown at it? Just Rs 10,000 crore. The gargantuan budget is necessary to develop and build the technology, flight hardware, infrastructure, and computer systems necessary for the mission, government spokesperson Sitanshu Kar said on Twitter.

The mission will carry a three-member "Vyomnaut" (Vyom means space in Sanskrit) crew into space for at least seven days, a plan Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced in his Independence day speech earlier this year. It'll make us the fourth nation to put humans into space, after Russia, the US, and China. The launch will be carried out from the Sriharikota space port in Andhra Pradesh. (12/28)

Satellites May Connect the Entire World to the Internet (Source: Economist)
Ships, planes and remote businesses rely for internet connections on signals sent from geostationary orbit, but this method is too pricey for widespread adoption. Beaming the internet via satellites orbiting closer to the planet has been tried before. The idea was popular at the height of the tech boom of the late 1990s. Three companies—Teledesic, Iridium and Globalstar—poured tens of billions of dollars into the low-Earth orbit satellite internet. It culminated in the collapse of Teledesic. Although the technology of the time worked, it was very costly and so the services on offer had to be hugely expensive, too.

OneWeb is among several firms that are trying leo satellites again. SpaceX, a rocket company founded by Elon Musk, a tech entrepreneur, is guarded about its proposed system, Starlink, but on November 15th American regulators approved an application for 7,518 satellites at an altitude of 340km (bringing the total for which the firm has approval to nearly 12,000). Telesat, a Canadian firm, has plans for a 512-satellite constellation. LeoSat, a startup with Japanese and Latin American backers, aims to build a 108-satellite network aimed at providing super-fast connections to businesses.

Iridium, still in the game, will launch the final ten satellites in its new constellation of 66 by the end of the year. Not to be outdone, a Chinese state-owned firm recently announced the construction of a 300-satellite constellation. In ten years’ time, if all goes to plan, these new firms will have put more satellites into orbit by themselves than the total launched to date. (12/27)

How to Land a Spaceship (Source: Air & Space)
No matter what mission astronauts are sent to accomplish, the engineers who send them must solve two basic problems: how to get the space travelers off the Earth (and into orbit or on their way to the moon or Mars) and how to bring them back again. With decades of experience in shoving payloads into space, the world’s space powers have unanimously settled on chemical rockets as the best way to launch astronauts. The question engineers still debate is: What’s the best way to land them?

Boeing and SpaceX, which, through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, are scheduled to send astronauts to the International Space Station next year, have been asked to respond to spaceflight’s two basic problems with ingenuity, economy, and gee-whiz technology for the cosmic challenges ahead. Yet one of the most visible elements of their privately designed spacecraft will hearken back deep into last century: They’re shaped as capsules, counting on their blunt, high-drag shapes and a brace of parachutes to slow them from an orbital speed of 17,000 mph to a velocity that human occupants can survive when they hit the Earth’s surface. Click here. (12/29)

UCF Researcher Will Use Blue Origin Rocket to Study Dust Clouds in Low-Gravity Environment (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
A UCF researcher’s experiment will hitch a ride into areas of space with low gravity on a Blue Origin rocket. Julie Brisset, an associate scientist at the school’s Florida Space Institute, recently landed a $250,000 NASA grant to study how microgravity affects dust clouds. The research could eventually help scientists learn more about the birth of stars or research smog in major cities.

“The way we study the whole universe is by looking at it,” Brisset said in a release. “So the interaction of light with anything, the more we understand it, the better we will know what we’re looking at.” Brisset’s experiment was one of 15 chosen by NASA in August under its Flight Opportunities program. During its flight, the Dust In-Situ Manipulation System, known as DIMS, will observe floating dust clouds for several minutes, giving scientists a pure look at how different grain sizes and materials affect a dust cloud’s appearance. (12/29)

Government Shutdown Affects Kennedy Space Center Tours, 1,200 Workers and a Historic Mission (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
More than half the workers at Kennedy Space Center, tours at the Visitor Complex and, for a few days at least, a historic mission to a foreign world have been impacted by a government shutdown that has extended a week — with no end in sight. For NASA, it means that more than 15,000 federal personnel — about 95 percent of all NASA employees — were sent home. At Kennedy Space Center, the figure was about 60 percent, or about 1,200 people.

According to a letter from NASA’s Chief Financial Officer Jeff DeWit to the federal Office of Management and Budget, about 820 KSC employees have remained working through the shutdown because their jobs are tied to space launch hardware activities, supporting the International Space Station or related to hardware that would be seriously damaged if work abruptly ceased. But, according to the memo, that meant NASA TV would be offline for one of the biggest scientific milestones of 2019.

At the Cape, Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex has remained open. The attraction is operated for NASA by Delaware North, and not supported by government or taxpayer funding. But special interest tours that go beyond the gates at KSC have ceased until the shutdown ends. Those impacted: the Explore Tour that goes to the Vehicle Assembly Building and launch complex 39, and the Early Space Tour that goes to the Air Force Space & Missile Museum, the Mercury 7 monument, and launch complex 34. Bus tours directly to the Apollo/Saturn V Center are operational. (12/29)

India’s ISRO Seeking To Develop ADMIRE VTVL Reusable Launch Vehicle (Source: SpaceWatch)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is looking to develop a reusable satellite launch vehicle similar to the reusable Grasshopper booster rockets from the SpaceX Falcon 9 satellite launch vehicle. The Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing (VTVL) reusable launch vehicle concept is called ADMIRE, and was revealed at a conference in Ahmedabad, India, by Dr. B.N. Suresh, founding director and Distinguished Professor at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (ISST).

ISRO’s ADMIRE VTVL reusable test vehicle will feature supersonic retro propulsion and specially designed retractable landing legs that will also act as steerable grid fins to guide the launch vehicle to its landing pad. The ADMIRE VTVL test vehicle will also feature an integrated navigation system with a laser altimeter and NavIC GNSS receiver that utilises the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). (12/29)

Pensacola Moving Ahead With Design of Hangar at ST Engineering Campus (Source: Pensacola News Journal)
The city of Pensacola is moving ahead with the design of the next hangar of the ST Engineering campus, although full funding for the four-year project is still pending, Mayor Grover Robinson said at a press conference this week. Lining up the remaining funding for the $210 million project to expand ST Engineering's maintenance, repair and overhaul facility at the Pensacola International Airport has become the top priority of Robinson's administration since taking office a month ago.

The expanded facility is expected to bring in an additional 1,325 jobs and will consist of three additional hangars similar to the one that opened in June, as well as an office, warehouse and shop buildings at the airport. "They are committed though to wanting to have a three-hangar process. We have timelines that we have to meet with the design and construction, so we are trying to move forward with the design work at this particular time, so that we won't miss any deadlines there." (12/28)

Shutdown Shutters: What's Open at NASA? (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
According to an email sent by NASA’s Bill Ingalls, the agency will not be using its distribution list or the NASA Photo Twitter account to distribute photos. All photos of the New Horizons event are expected to be posted to NASA’s Flickr account, where they will be accessible to the media and public. However, there could be some longer-lasting effects from the shutdown.

Wayne Hale, a former Space Shuttle Program manager and flight director who currently consults for Special Aerospace Services, tweeted Dec. 22 that NASA civil servants reviewing safety items for commercial crew flights, such as SpaceX’s upcoming unpiloted Crew Dragon Demo-1 mission, are not allowed to work during the funding lapse. As such, he suggested there could be a delay for commercial crew flights.

Moreover, Russian news outlet RIA Novosti quoted a Russian industry source on Dec. 28, 2018, saying the first Crew Dragon flight was postponed from its current target of Jan. 17, 2019, to the end of the month. The source did not specify the reason for the delay and this has not been confirmed by SpaceX or NASA. Click here. (12/29)