Tag Archives: science

A new report raises concerns about the future of NASA

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A concerning report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) expresses some serious concerns about the future of America’s space exploration agency.

The NASEM report was written by a panel of aerospace experts and lays out what it sees as a possible "hollow future” for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It addresses issues of underfunding due to “declining long-term national emphasis on aeronautics and civil space,” an assertion that NASA itself is aware of and agrees with. The report also notes that NASA’s problems extend far beyond having enough funding to carry out its missions and operations.

Some of the report’s “core findings” suggest areas of concern that could affect the space agency’s future. These include a focus on “short-term measures without adequate consideration for longer-term needs and implications,” reliance on “milestone-based purchase-of-service contracts” and inefficiency due to “slow and cumbersome business operations.” The report also raised concerns about the current generation of talent being siphoned off by private aerospace companies, and the next generation of engineers not receiving an adequate foundation of knowledge due to our underfunded public school systems. Finally the report states bluntly that NASA’s infrastructure “is already well beyond its design life.”

These and other issues could lead to even more serious problems. Norman Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin chief executive and the report’s lead author, told The Washington Post that reliance on the private sector could further erode NASA's workforce, reducing its role to one of oversight instead of problem-solving.

Congress could allocate more funds to NASA to address these concerns but that’s not likely since it’s constantly struggling to prevent government shutdowns. Instead, Augustine says NASA could focus on prioritizing its efforts on more strategic goals and initiatives.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/a-new-report-raises-concerns-about-the-future-of-nasa-184643260.html?src=rss

How to watch Polaris Dawn astronauts attempt the first commercial spacewalk

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Two of Polaris Dawn's four astronauts could make history today by performing the first ever commercial spacewalk at around 700 kilometers (435 miles) above our planet. Jared Isaacman, the mission leader and funder, and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis will leave the confines and safety of the Crew Dragon capsule for 15 and 20 minutes each. The other two crew members, Scott Poteet and Anna Menon, will stay inside the vehicle to monitor the spacewalkers' status and make sure everything's in order. SpaceX will stream the event live on its website and on X starting at 4:50AM Eastern time. In case the spacewalk has to be called off, the astronauts will have another opportunity on September 13 at the same time. 

As The New York Times explains, the Crew Dragon has no airlock like the International Space Station does, so the astronauts will have to let the all the air out of the vehicle before opening one of its hatches. All four will have to wear the company's extravehicular activity (EVA) suits, which are upgraded and tougher versions of its suits for intravehicular activity (IVA). 

SpaceX's EVAs come with new joints that can flex and rotate, thereby providing greater mobility. Their helmets are equipped with a heads-up display (HUD) and camera, and the spacesuits as a whole have a Faraday layer that can protect them from electric fields. The Polaris Dawn crew's spacewalk will put the suit to the test as they subject it to the harsh environment of outer space while conducting mobility tests. "The development of this suit and the execution of the spacewalk will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions as life becomes multiplanetary," the Polaris Dawn's website reads. The whole operation, from the beginning until the astronauts close the hatch to repressurize Crew Dragon, will last for two hours.

The civilian mission launched in the early hours of September 10 after multiple delays. In addition to accomplishing the first commercial spacewalk, the mission has other objectives, including sending a crew farther than any Dragon mission before and farther than anybody has been since the Apollo program, even reaching parts of the Van Allen radiation belt. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/how-to-watch-polaris-dawn-astronauts-attempt-the-first-commercial-spacewalk-074548007.html?src=rss

Polaris Dawn is finally headed to space for its groundbreaking civilian mission

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A SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the four private astronauts of the Polaris Dawn mission has launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the early hours of September 10 after a few weeks of delays. The mission was scheduled to lift off at the end of August but was postponed first due to technical issues, then because of poor weather conditions forecasted for the crew’s return. On board are Jared Isaacman — the billionaire who funded the mission — retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. They’ll attempt several firsts during the five-day flight, including the first-ever commercial spacewalk.

That attempt will also mark the first spacewalk from a Dragon capsule. Among Polaris Dawn's other goals is to send its crew farther than anyone has traveled since the Apollo program, targeting an altitude of about 870 miles from Earth. The journey will take the capsule and its crew briefly into the Van Allen radiation belt.

Polaris Dawn is meant to be the first of three human spaceflight missions under Isaacman’s Polaris Program. Its crew will put SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity space suit to its most important test yet, as they’ll all wear it for protection against the vacuum of space when the Dragon’s doors open for the spacewalk. The spacewalk will take place at an elliptical orbit roughly 435 miles above Earth’s surface, and two crew members will leave the capsule.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/polaris-dawn-is-finally-headed-to-space-for-its-groundbreaking-civilian-mission-093346616.html?src=rss

Boeing’s Starliner is back without the astronauts it flew to the ISS

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Boeing's Starliner capsule has undocked from the ISS at 6:04PM Eastern time on September 6 and has safely and gently landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 12:01AM on September 7. Calypso, as the capsule is called, didn't have a crew onboard despite flying to the ISS with astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. NASA decided in late August that the astronauts will come home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in February for safety reasons. Wilmore and Williams merely provided support for the capsule's trip back home and watched the coverage of its re-entry and landing. "You have got this. We have your backs, and you've got this. Bring her back to Earth," Williams told ground control.

The astronauts flew on the Starliner as part of its first crewed flight meant to prove that the spacecraft is ready to regularly ferry humans to the ISS alongside the SpaceX Crew Dragon. They were only supposed to stay on the orbiting laboratory for eight days, but the spacecraft's service module started leaking helium on their way there. Some of the module's thrusters had malfunctioned, as well. The Starliner uses helium to pressurize its fuel tanks and to push propellant to its thrusters that maneuver the spacecraft. Over the past three months, engineers on the ground conducted tests on Starliner with help from the astronauts, but NASA ultimately decided to have the Starliner fly back home uncrewed because it didn't have confidence with the certainty of the thrusters' performance. 

During the Starliner's post-landing press conference, Boeing was noticeably absent, and three NASA officials talked about the landing instead. When asked why Boeing wasn't there and if the relationship between the agency and the company was affected by Starliner's issues, the representatives said that Boeing deferred to NASA to represent the mission. They said that all three of them talked to Boeing's managers and that the company is committed to working with the agency. Steve Stich, the manager for Commercial Crew Program at NASA Kennedy, also added that while all of them were happy with the landing, a part of them still wishes it would've gone the way they'd planned, with the astronauts coming home aboard the Calypso. 

Stitch, Joel Montalbano (NASA's deputy associate administrator for Space Operations Mission Directorate) and Dana Weigel (NASA's manager for the International Space Station) all praised the Starliner for its successful docking and "bullseye landing." They said they learned a lot from the mission, which apparently achieved 85 to 90 percent of its objectives, and stressed that it's important to remember that things don't always go as planned when it comes to test flights. 

It'll take around two weeks to get the Calypso back to NASA grounds and around a week after that to get all the data from the capsule. NASA and Boeing are planning to analyze the data the spacecraft gathered across its systems from its time in orbit until its undocking, reentry and landing. They will then use that information to design improvements for the spacecraft. 

Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to inspect the thrusters that malfunctioned on the flight to the ISS, as well as the "doghouses" that contained the spacecraft's propellant system where the helium had leaked. They had always planned to discard the service module that contained those elements upon re-entry, and it's now at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. NASA previously said that the issues cropped up because the propulsion equipment got hotter that expected while flying, causing container seals to loosen and to leak helium. In case of the thrusters, the heat apparently caused seals to bulge and restrict propellant flow, leading to outages. 

Stitch said he wouldn't call those problems insurmountable — they just need some time to address them. They also can't tell at the moment if Starliner's next flight would have a crew onboard. For now, the agency is preparing for other missions. By the end of September, the SpaceX Crew-8 mission vehicle is scheduled to undock and come back to Earth, while the SpaceX Crew-9 mission is expected to launch. Crew-9 will fly with two astronauts instead of four to make room for Wilmore and Williams for its return flight in February. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeings-starliner-is-back-without-the-astronauts-it-flew-to-the-iss-110013469.html?src=rss

A creepy, sonar-like sound coming through Starliner’s speaker posed a brief mystery on the ISS

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Starliner is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station and make its return trip to Earth uncrewed in just a matter of days, but it apparently still has a few new mysteries left in it to throw at the team before it departs. On Saturday, astronaut Butch Wilmore alerted NASA’s Mission Control about an unexplained “strange noise” coming from a speaker in the spacecraft, which you can hear in an audio clip of the conversation shared on a NASASpaceflight forum by meteorologist Rob Dale (spotted by Ars Technica). It starts at around the 45-second mark, ringing out on a steady beat. “I don’t know what’s making it,” Wilmore said.

NASA has since said that the sound has stopped in a statement to SpaceNews’ Jeff Foust on Monday, and attributed it to an audio configuration between the ISS and Starliner. It was just speaker feedback, according to the space agency.

The noise was a bit of a head-scratcher over the weekend. After confirming with Mission Control on Saturday that they could hear the sound too, once Wilmore brought his mic over to the speaker, the flight controller in Houston said, “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.” Wilmore then let it play for about 20 seconds more before wrapping up the call. “Just to make sure I’m on the same page, this is emanating from the speaker in Starliner,” Mission Control asked, “you don’t notice anything else, any other noises, any weird configs in there?” The astronaut noted at the time that everything else seemed normal.

“The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback,” NASA said in its explanation to Foust on Monday. “The crew is asked to contact mission control when they hear sounds originating in the comm system.” The incident had no impact to the crew or Starliner’s departure schedule, it added.

The Boeing spacecraft has been docked with the ISS since early June, and engineers have since had their hands full trying to get to the bottom of the issues that arose during its first crewed flight. When Starliner finally heads back to Earth on September 6, it’ll be leaving its crew — Wilmore and NASA astronaut Suni Williams — behind on the ISS, where they’ll continue to work for the next few months while they wait for a ride home from SpaceX in February 2025.

Update, September 2 2024, 2:30PM ET: This story has been updated to include a statement and explanation from NASA.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/now-theres-a-creepy-sonar-like-sound-coming-through-one-of-starliners-speakers-184751210.html?src=rss

How to watch Boeing Starliner’s uncrewed flight back to Earth

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The Starliner is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station and to make its way back to Earth at 6:04PM Eastern time today, September 6. If the weather cooperates and the spacecraft leaves the ISS as planned, it will be landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico with the help of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated airbags at around 12:03AM ET on September 7. While the ground teams at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida can control the spacecraft remotely if needed, it will be an uncrewed, fully autonomous flight for the Starliner. 

NASA recently announced that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts that headed to the ISS aboard the Starliner for its first crewed flight, will be coming home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon instead. Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS in June and were only supposed to spend a little more than a week on the orbiting laboratory. On the way there, however, five of the spacecraft's maneuvering thrusters had failed, and its helium leak problem that previously caused its launch to be pushed back had worsened. Engineers on the ground conducted tests with help from the astronauts on the ISS to determine whether the Starliner was safe for the crew to ride back to Earth. In the end, NASA decided that it's safer for Wilmore and Williams to come home on a SpaceX vehicle, because "there was too much uncertainty" around the Starliner's thrusters. 

The space agency will cover Starliner's return live on NASA+, the NASA app, its website, and you can also watch it below. Coverage of the undocking procedure will start at 5:45PM ET, while coverage for the spacecraft's deorbit burn, entry and landing will start at 10:50PM. NASA will also livestream Starliner's landing on September 7, starting at 12AM ET.

As for the SpaceX Crew-9 mission that's replacing the Boeing's vehicle on the ISS, it's scheduled to launch no earlier than September 24. Instead of flying with four astronauts as planned, it will fly with two — NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — to leave two seats empty for its return flight with Wilmore and Williams in February 2025. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeings-starliner-is-coming-back-without-a-crew-on-september-6-140023545.html?src=rss

These robots move through the magic of mushrooms

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Researchers at Cornell University tapped into fungal mycelia to power a pair of proof-of-concept robots. Mycelia, the underground fungal network that can sprout mushrooms as its above-ground fruit, can sense light and chemical reactions and communicate through electrical signals. This makes it a novel component in hybrid robotics that could someday detect crop conditions otherwise invisible to humans.

The Cornell researchers created two robots: a soft, spider-like one and a four-wheeled buggy. The researchers used mycelia’s light-sensing abilities to control the machines using ultraviolet light. The project required experts in mycology (the study of fungi), neurobiology, mechanical engineering, electronics and signal processing.

“If you think about a synthetic system — let’s say, any passive sensor — we just use it for one purpose,” lead author Anand Mishra said. “But living systems respond to touch, they respond to light, they respond to heat, they respond to even some unknowns, like signals. That’s why we think, OK, if you wanted to build future robots, how can they work in an unexpected environment? We can leverage these living systems, and any unknown input comes in, the robot will respond to that.”

The fungal robot uses an electrical interface that (after blocking out interference from vibrations and electromagnetic signals) records and processes the mycelia’s electrophysical activity in real time. A controller, mimicking a portion of animals' central nervous systems, acted as “a kind of neural circuit.” The team designed the controller to read the fungi’s raw electrical signal, process it and translate it into digital controls. These were then sent to the machine’s actuators.

Diagram showing various parts of a complex fungus-robot hybrid
Cornell University / Science Robotics

The pair of shroom-bots successfully completed three experiments, including walking and rolling in response to the mycelia’s signals and changing their gaits in response to UV light. The researchers also successfully overrode the mycelia’s signals to control the robots manually, a crucial component if later versions were to be deployed in the wild.

As for where this technology goes, it could spawn more advanced versions that tap into mycelia’s ability to sense chemical reactions. “In this case we used light as the input, but in the future it will be chemical,” according to Rob Shepherd, Cornell mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and the paper’s senior author. The researchers believe this could lead to future robots that sense soil chemistry in crops, deciding when to add more fertilizer, “perhaps mitigating downstream effects of agriculture like harmful algal blooms,” Shepherd said.

You can read the team’s research paper at Science Robotics and find out more about the project from the Cornell Chronicle.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/these-robots-move-through-the-magic-of-mushrooms-171612639.html?src=rss

Blue Origin targets mid-October for New Glenn’s inaugural flight and launch of NASA’s Escapade Mars mission

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Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket and its Mars-bound NASA payload now have a tentative launch date. The company said on Friday that the inaugural flight will take place no earlier than October 13, carrying two probes built by Rocket Lab to help NASA study the effects of solar wind on Mars’ atmosphere. This will be the first time New Glenn flies after years of delays in its development, and the date cuts well into the window of opportunity for travel to Mars, which occurs roughly every two years based on the planetary alignments. That launch period opens on September 29 and extends to mid-October, per Ars Technica.

The mission will lift off from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The twin spacecraft of NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission (Escapade) arrived in Florida on August 19 to begin preparations and integration with the launch vehicle. 

Now, the pressure is really on for Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin to get New Glenn ready in time. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the company recently suffered two failures at its factory that resulted in damage to hardware for its second and third New Glenn flights. But, a spokesperson told the publication that it’s still on track for this year’s inaugural launch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origin-targets-mid-october-for-new-glenns-inaugural-flight-and-launch-of-nasas-escapade-mars-mission-224611923.html?src=rss

SpaceX will soon send the Polaris Dawn crew off to attempt the first commercial spacewalk

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Polaris Dawn, a private space mission that aims to complete the first-ever civilian spacewalk, is expected to launch this week. On X, SpaceX said it’s targeting Tuesday August 27 at 3:38AM ET for liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Polaris Dawn crew to orbit. Led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, Polaris Dawn plans to send its crew of four private citizens as far as 870 miles from Earth — farther than any human has traveled since the Apollo program. The spacewalk, in which two of the crew members will step outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule, will take place at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth.

The Polaris Dawn crew includes Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, as commander, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott “Kidd” Poteet as its pilot, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon as mission specialists. Menon will also serve as the medical officer. The mission is expected to last about five days. 

While only two crew members will actually leave the spacecraft during the flight, all will be exposed to the vacuum of space when the hatch opens — the Dragon capsule doesn’t have an airlock. It’ll be a critical test for SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity space suits, which the entire Polaris Dawn crew will have to wear to keep them safe. In an interview with Florida Today ahead of the mission, Menon said the suits have gone through extensive testing on the ground and expressed confidence in their performance. “We absolutely know the suits can pressurize there,” Menon said, adding that the team has “spent a lot of time pressurizing the suits at this point.”

Polaris Dawn will also put Starlink laser-based communications to the test in space for the first time, and gather data to support research into the effects of spaceflight on human health. The mission comes several years in the making and is the first of three planned Polaris spaceflights.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacex-will-soon-send-the-polaris-dawn-crew-off-to-attempt-the-first-commercial-spacewalk-171538506.html?src=rss

Starliner astronauts will come home in February on a SpaceX Crew Dragon

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After more than two months of tests and discussions, NASA has decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed. In a press conference on Saturday, Steve Stich, manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said “there was too much uncertainty” around the predictions for Starliner’s thrusters to move forward with a crewed return flight. 

The plan now is that Starliner’s first crew will return with SpaceX’s Crew-9, which is scheduled to launch to the ISS at the end of September. Crew-9 was initially supposed to carry four crew members, but will instead have to go ahead with two, so as to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the way back. That spacecraft is being reconfigured with seats for the two astronauts, and Dragon spacesuits will be added to its cargo for them to wear home. By the time Wilmore and Williams depart, the duo will have been on the space station for about eight months. The Starliner flight test was only supposed to last a little over a week. 

The next step is to get Starliner ready for undocking and wrap up as an uncrewed flight test. The agency plans to conduct the second part of its readiness review for the process this coming week, and expects undocking to take place around early next month. “We are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we will review those aspects at the readiness review,” Stich said. “We’re going to go with a simplified separation technique to get away from the station a little more quickly.”

The issue with Starliner’s thrusters has been “very complex,” Stich said, and their performance has been “challenging to predict.” Without being able to accurately predict how the thrusters would perform from undocking through the deorbit burn, the potential risks for the astronauts were just too high, he explained.

“We have had mistakes in the past,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We have lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information can come forward.” With that context looming over the discussions, he said, “We have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection, you come forward. Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and and its most routine, and a test flight by its nature is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/starliner-astronauts-will-come-home-in-february-on-a-spacex-crew-dragon-173008021.html?src=rss