July 4, 2021

Northern Heat Exceeds Worst-Case Climate Models (Source: Guardian)
In Lytton Canada it felt as if the weather itself had stagnated. Trapped in a vast heat dome that enveloped western Canada and the north-western US, temperatures had nowhere to go but up. In Lytton, the Canadian national heat record was broken on Monday, smashed on Tuesday and then obliterated on Wednesday when the local monitoring station registered 49.6C (121F). After the insufferable heat came choking fire. First the forest burned, then parts of the town.

On Wednesday evening, the mayor, Jan Polderman, issued the evacuation order. “It’s dire. The whole town is on fire,” he said on TV. “It took, like, a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere.” By Thursday, satellite images showed an eruption of blazes around the village and a widening smoke cloud across the region.

Several areas of California and Idaho also saw new highs. The previous week, northern Europe and Russia also sweltered in an unprecedented heat bubble. June records were broken in Moscow (34.8C), Helsinki (31.7C), Belarus (35.7C) and Estonia (34.6C). Further east, Siberia experienced an early heatwave that helped to reduce the amount of sea ice in the Laptev Sea to a record low for the time of year. (7/2)

Pensacola Hangars to Support Company's Expansion of Aircraft Overhauls (Source: Pensacola News Journal)
As construction crews were busy clearing the site for ST Engineering's second hangar at Pensacola International Airport on Thursday morning, local officials, dignitaries and ST Engineering executives gathered in front of the first hangar to mark the beginning of the construction of Project Titan. The $210 million project will bring three additional hangars for ST Engineering's aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul facility in Pensacola. The project also will add administrative office space to two of the new hangars.

Jeffery Lam, president of commercial aerospace at ST Engineering, told the crowd of about 50 people that when the buildings are complete in 2024, they will make up ST Engineering's largest facility and will be able to service 500 aircraft a year. The project will add 1,325 jobs to ST Engineering's campus on top of the 400 jobs that are part of the first hangar that opened in 2018. (7/2)

Pittsburgh Projects Aimed at Encouraging Future Space Explorers (Source: Pittsburgh Gazette)
Pittsburgh may not be the site of rocket launches into space, but it is poised to become a training ground for the next generation of astronauts, scientists and engineers who will carry space exploration to the moon and beyond. A NASA official recently visited Carnegie Science Center to help launch an initiative aimed at getting kids interested in space and how they might contribute to future endeavors.

The center plans to open an exhibit, “Our Destiny in Space,” in addition to offering programming that focuses on imaging humans living on Mars. North Side-based lunar tech company Astrobotic, the Keystone Space Collaborative, the Readiness Institute at Penn State and Discovery Space at State College will provide the training, summer programs, college programs, internships and eventual career pathways. The latest initiative ties in with Astrobotic’s plans to open the MoonShot Museum by next summer, which will include an opportunity for visitors to watch workers constructing lunar landers and rovers that will be used in future missions. (7/3)

Richard Branson Believes the Space Market Has Room for 20 Companies Launching Tourists (Source: CNBC)
Sir Richard Branson believes there is plenty of opportunity in the market for companies like Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, or Elon Musk’s SpaceX. “There’s room for 20 space companies to take people up there,” Branson said in an interview this week. “The more spaceships we can build, the more we can bring the price down and the more we’ll be able to satisfy demand and that will happen over the years to come.” The companies of Branson, Bezos, and Musk are each flying spacecraft that can carry passengers, but in different ways, as the former two fly to the edge of space while the latter goes further, into orbit. (7/3)

China Launches Five New Satellites (Source: Xinhua)
China sent five satellites into planned orbits from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern Shanxi Province on Saturday. The satellite Jilin-1 01B, Xingshidai-10 and three Jilin-1 Gaofen 03D satellites were launched by a Long March-2D rocket. This was the 376th flight mission of the Long March rocket series, the launch center said. (7/3)

Space Miners May Use Rockets to Harvest the Moon's Water Ice (Source: Space.com)
Rockets may help humanity explore the solar system in more ways than one. Three companies — Masten Space Systems, Lunar Outpost and Honeybee Robotics — are developing a new system that would use rockets to mine water ice on the moon.

Water ice is thought to be abundant in the moon's polar regions, especially on the permanently shadowed floors of some craters. Harvesting this resource is crucial to establishing a permanent human presence on the moon, NASA officials and exploration advocates say, and not just because it will help keep astronauts alive. Water ice can be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel, allowing spacecraft to top up their tanks away from Earth. Click here. (7/2)

NASA Wants to Change the Way it Protects Astronauts From Radiation (Source: Space.com)
NASA uses a radiation exposure cap to determine how long astronauts can stay in space. But that cap isn't equal for all astronauts, and now, independent experts are backing NASA's effort to change it. Currently, NASA calculates that cap based on a risk estimate. The limit is the amount of total exposure that would give an astronaut a 3% higher chance of dying of cancer in the rest of their life, based on available data. But susceptibility to the cancers that radiation can cause varies with age and reproductive organs, so the limit doesn't allow equal time in space.

NASA's women can't spend as much time in orbit as NASA's men, and younger astronauts can't stay up as long as their older counterparts, who don't have as many years left for cancer to develop. NASA has considered changing this system to a cap that would limit all astronauts' exposure to the risk limit as applied to the most vulnerable: a 35-year-old woman. A committee of the National Academies of Sciences has unveiled a report that supports NASA's proposal. In hard units, that's a total of 600 millisieverts over a career with the agency. For comparison, a single chest X-ray at your doctor's office gives you around 0.1 millisieverts, and you pick up around 3 millisieverts every year from Earth's natural background radiation.

A six-month ISS stay exposes an astronaut to 50-120 millisieverts. More distant destinations like Mars carry greater exposures. The proposed limit would expose younger astronauts and women to comparatively riskier amounts of radiation and reduce the amount of time that older astronauts and men can spend in orbit. The suggested change isn't supported universally. "I think this change is problematic," said Francis Cucinotta, a radiation biologist who has previously worked with NASA. He calls the proposal akin to playing Russian roulette with female astronauts, placing them at extra risk from radiation exposure. (7/2)

Europe's ExoMars Parachute Still Experiencing Problems in Drop Test (Source: Space.com)
A mock-up of the ExoMars landing capsule survived a high altitude drop test but parachute problems, which have plagued the European/Russian Mars mission for years, are not yet completely resolved. The 115-foot (35 meters) parachute that will slow down the European Space Agency's (ESA) ExoMars life-hunting rover during its landing on Mars in 2023 has suffered "minor damage" during the latest high altitude drop test. Trouble with the parachute, which failed in previous drop tests in 2019 and 2020, was the main reason for the postponement of the mission from its previous launch date in 2020 to September 2022. (7/2)