Lifeboat Foundation

The first commercial spacewalk mission looks to be back on schedule with Polaris Dawn saying that it will launch no earlier than July 31, 2024. The Dragon spacecraft is slated to carry the four-person crew farther from Earth than any mission in over 50 years.

Commercial space flights mean a lot more than private firms filling government space contracts. Though most private missions today carry cargo and crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS), the future will see more and more private visits to orbit that have nothing to do with national governments.

On September 15, 2021, the first completely private mission in history, a privately owned and operated rocket putting a privately owned and operated spacecraft into orbit with private astronauts aboard on a private charter, lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The craft was a SpaceX Crew Dragon and the launch vehicle a Falcon 9 rocket that boosted the Inspiration4 mission to an altitude of 357 miles (575 km).

India’s first space-based solar observatory, Aditya-L1, successfully completed its first halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point, Isro announced on Monday. The observatory was launched on September 2, 2023, and was inserted into its targeted halo orbit on January 6, 2024. This achievement demonstrates the spacecraft’s capacity to maintain its complex trajectory. Aditya-L1 performed its first two manoeuvres on February 22 and June 7, 2024. The third manoeuvre, conducted on July 2, 2024, ensured the spacecraft’s transition into its second halo orbit around L1.

Sophisticated spacecraft often run on shockingly outdated computing systems: consider that the Perseverance rover runs on a PowerPC 750, the processor famous for running on iMacs in the late 1990s.

San Francisco-based Aethero is aiming to bring more powerful computing systems to orbit, and their first payload launches this month on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 rideshare mission. The computer, a small, stackable MVP called AetherNxN that’s built on an Nvidia Orin processor, will be getting extra protection from a new radiation shielding material that the product’s developers, Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC), say could help unlock a new era for computing in space.

Today, electronics in space are protected from harmful radiation in two ways. They’re physically shielded, using some combination of materials like aluminum and tantalum, and they’re radiation hardened, which generally means that they’re designed in ways that increase their tolerance to radiation exposure. The AetherNxN computer is rad-hardened, but adding CSC’s shielding “enables us to bring that AI-capable of hardware into space and have it operate under these very hostile conditions,” Aethero cofounder Edward Ge said in a recent interview.

A new review examines advancements in thermal management technologies (TMTs) for spacecraft electronics, tackling the problems of heat acquisition, transport, and rejection in the extreme conditions of space. This review is intended to inform the development of future thermal management systems for spacecraft, enhancing both the reliability and effectiveness of space missions.

Spacecraft electronics operate under extreme conditions, facing issues like microgravity, thermal cycling, and space radiation. These factors necessitate robust thermal management solutions to maintain the functionality and longevity of onboard equipment. Traditional thermal control methods often fall short in addressing these challenges. Based on these challenges, there is a need to conduct in-depth research on advanced thermal management technologies to ensure the stability and efficiency of space missions.

The four volunteers who have been living and working inside NASA’s first simulated yearlong Mars habitat mission are set to exit their ground-based home on Saturday, July 6. NASA will provide live coverage of the crew’s exit from the habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston at 5 p.m. EDT.

NASA will stream the activity, which will include a short welcome ceremony, on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, the agency’s website, and NASA Johnson’s X and Facebook accounts. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms, including social media.

The first Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission began in the 3D printed habitat on June 25, 2023, with crew members Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell, and Nathan Jones. For more than a year, the crew simulated Mars mission operations, including “Marswalks,” grew and harvested several vegetables to supplement their shelf-stable food, maintained their equipment and habitat, and operated under additional stressors a Mars crew will experience, including communication delays with Earth, resource limitations, and isolation.

Water has a relatively low viscosity – that is, it deforms fast under stress – and it has a density much lower than hard rock. These two qualities make it ideal for landing spacecraft. But the other main reason water works so well is because it covers 70% of the planet’s surface, so the chances of hitting it are high when you’re falling from space.

The science behind splashdown is complex, as a long history proves.

In 1961, the U.S. conducted the first crewed splashdowns in history. These used Mercury reentry capsules.

Or maybe just something Wallace and Gromit might jam onto a rocket for a second Grand Day Out.

ISRO Chairman S Somanath stressed on commercial viability in space activities, emphasized the need for enhanced industrial capacity to produce launchers, and announced GSAT-20’s mid-August launch on Falcon 9.

Extreme Dormancy as a Way to Survive on Earth and Possibly also on Alien Planets (and May also be a Solution to Long-Term Space Travel) Posted on BigThink, with link at https://www.searchforlifeintheuniverse.com/post/extreme-dorm…en-planets