DailyDirt: Making It To Mars

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Traveling to Mars is no simple feat, and it's much more difficult than a relatively short trip to the moon. The atmosphere on Mars is thinner than the Earth's, so it poses a significant threat to any vehicle that attempts to land on the planet. Plus, a trip to Mars could take months depending on how much fuel is used (or what kind of propulsion is used). Still, several projects are making the ambitious journey, and here are just a few examples of Martian missions.

• India's Mangalyaan spacecraft has successfully reached Mars orbit, and this Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) cost just $74 million to accomplish. This wasn't as easy task, as the worldwide record of 30 of the 51 previous attempts to reach Mars have ended in failure and India is the first country to accomplish a successful Mars mission on the first attempt. [url]
• Over 200,000 people have volunteered to go on a one-way trip to Mars in 2023. These folks will be narrowed down to about a group of 40 people selected to do seven years of intensive training. [url]
• The Time Capsule to Mars (TC2M) project aims to send some cubesats to Mars in 2017 containing an assortment of digital media. Will anyone be surprised if some unlicensed music or media sneaks on-board? [url]

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Filed Under: cubesat, india, mangalyaan, manned missions, mars, mars one, orbit, satellites, space, space exploration, spacecraft, time capsule

DailyDirt: Who Wants To Be An Astronaut?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Not too long ago, becoming an astronaut was an amazing achievement that only a very few, rigorously selected and intensely trained pilots could ever hope to attain. But nowadays, while it's not exactly commonplace to be a space traveler, if you have enough disposable income, you could pay the Russian Space Agency for a ride or line up to buy a ticket on a commercial flight (to the "edge" of space). Over 500 people have been in space (from 36 different countries), and plenty more people will follow them. Here are just a few things you might want to know about space travel before you plan your next trip.

• South Korea started its astronaut program in 2006, and Yi So-yeon became the first Korean woman to go into space on a Soyuz mission in 2008. South Korea spent about $28 million to get Yi up to the International Space Station, and she recently retired as an astronaut. Her retirement raises some questions about whether the trip was a worthwhile venture, but then again, some folks have been asking what the point of going to space is for decades. [url]
• A manned trip to Mars would take months, and it won't be easy to keep people happy and safe in small living quarters for that long. If astronauts could hibernate on the way, it might make the journey more tolerable. Bears can hibernate for months, but people have only been in a medically-induced hypothermic torpor for about 10 days. [url]
• Astronauts have noticed a "Charlie Brown" effect due to microgravity that makes their faces swell because fluids tend to accumulate in the head in space. The result is like having congestion, and it apparently affects the sense of smell (and taste), leading to curious cravings for spicy foods. [url]

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Filed Under: astronauts, hibernation, iss, mars, medically-induced hypothermic torpor, soyuz, space, yi so-yeon

DailyDirt: First In Commercial Space...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The space race used to inspire kids to become astronauts or scientists, but the "race" has slowed down quite a bit over the years. So now, it looks like a lot of the cool stuff going on in the field of aerospace is a bit less remarkable than "putting a man on the moon" or having the first satellite EVER. Those events were really amazing because they had never been done before or even really thought of as possible. Here are just a few recent "firsts" that some commercial space projects are making.

• SpaceX is building "the world's first commercial launch complex designed specifically for orbital missions" in Texas. Sure, there are other commercial launch sites for rockets, but SpaceX has the potential to launch re-usable and manned spacecraft into orbit. [url]
• DigitalGlobe's WorldView-3 spacecraft is orbiting our planet, capable of looking down at us with a resolution of about 1 foot (the highest resolution for a non-spy non-government satellite). This satellite can take an image of anywhere in the world within a day's time and possibly predict the fruit yield of an individual tree. [url]
• Japanese beverage maker Otsuka is planning to put the first commercial ad on the moon (if you don't count the fake MTV flag on the moon). Otsuka's Pocari Sweat powder will be packaged in a special 1 kilogram titanium can, and maybe someday, an astronaut will actually mix the powder with water and drink it. [url]

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Filed Under: commercial space, moon ad, rockets, satellites, space, space race
Companies: digitalglobe, otsuka, spacex

DailyDirt: All Kinds Of Bugs Living In Outer Space?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Panspermia isn't a crazy idea, especially when we seem to keep finding extremophiles that can survive in very harsh environments. The components of life may be traveling between planets or solar systems at a non-zero rate, seeding the universe with living materials. That said, life is still relatively fragile, but there may be some optimism in finding living specimens elsewhere than Earth. (First, though, we have to make sure we're not the ones contaminating our own solar system.) Here are just a few links on various organisms that might survive a trip in space -- without a space ship.

• The International Space Station (ISS) may have microorganisms living on the outside of the station, and evidence of sea plankton has been found on the exterior surface of the ISS. No one knows exactly how sea plankton could have gotten on the ISS, but contamination on interplanetary objects (eg. comets, asteroids, etc) could spread life farther than previously suspected. [url]
• Astrobiology researchers are just starting to figure out which known organisms can survive the harsh conditions of space. Spore-forming bacteria (eg. Bacillus pumilus SAFR-032) have been seen to survive in simulated space environments, and similar organisms could support lithopanspermia theories suggesting an extra-terrestrial origin of life as we know it. [url]
• Biologists can make very tiny space suits for insects if they really wanted to. In order to study live insects in a scanning electron microscopes (SEM), biologists can coat bugs with a polymer film that protects them from drying out in a vacuum chamber (and lets them live while they're being bombarded with charged particles). [url]

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Filed Under: astrobiology, et, extremophiles, insects, iss, lithopanspermia, microbes, panspermia, plankton, space

DailyDirt: I'm Givin' Her All She's Got, Captain...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Space travel is filled with all kinds of complex challenges -- microgravity, radiation exposure, fuel constraints, etc. Thankfully, engineers and physicists are coming up with creative solutions to some of these problems, and new propulsion systems are being put through a battery of tests to verify their safety and reliability. Here are just a few cool propulsion designs (that may or may not work at all).

• NASA can't explain how it works, but there's a propulsion system that seemingly violates conservation of momentum -- and it actually produces a small amount of thrust. There are a few different versions of this propellant-free thruster, called a "Cannae Drive" or EmDrive.. and there's even a Kickstarter project to try to build a similar system. Is it April Fool's day every day? [url]
• NASA is looking into every possible means to improve space travel, including the very speculative faster-than-light "warp drive" that proposes to bend space-time to get to distant destinations in a matter of weeks instead of decades. Alcubierre drives are purely theoretical, and NASA explicitly states any kind of FTL warp drive is firmly in the speculation realm. [url]
• Vortex rockets provide a practical solution for reducing the weight of a traditional liquid-fuel rocket. Conventional rockets require some (heavy) complex cooling systems to prevent parts of the rocket itself from melting and/or vaporizing away, but a vortex rocket eliminates the need for cooling by creating a mini-tornado of burning fuel where the hottest temperatures are kept away from rocket structures. [url]

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Filed Under: alcubierre drive, cannae drive, emdrive, propulsion, rockets, space, space exploration, vortex rockets, warp drive
Companies: kickstarter, nasa

DailyDirt: Out Into Space

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The promise of large-scale human expansion into space has been around for a long time, and we've already passed countless fiction-proposed deadlines for such a development. Still, while we're not living in moon cities as many may have predicted, we're constantly taking unprecedented steps outwards. Here are just a few of the latest:

• The NASA robot that helps out on the ISS now has a pair of brand new legs. They're nine feet long with seven joints and grapplers on the end, allowing it to perform lots of new tasks. [url]
• Scientists are researching whether earthly microorganisms could survive on Mars — to make sure we don't accidentally take them there. Though we haven't built any extraterrestrial human colonies, we have to be careful about unintentionally creating other ones. [url]
• Meanwhile, the solar system keeps getting bigger, with the recent discovery of a new planetoid. VP113 lies beyond Neptune and the Kuiper belt. [url]

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Filed Under: mars, moon, nasa, planets, space

Commander Hadfield's Amazing Cover Of David Bowie's Space Oddity Disappears Today, Thanks To Copyright

from the copyright:-making-culture-disappear-since-1709 dept

A year ago, we wrote a whole post looking at the copyright questions raised by Canadian astronaut, Commander Chris Hadfield, doing a cover version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," along with an astounding music video in space, as he prepared to return to earth. Hadfield, for months, had been a great ambassador for the space program, using a variety of social media to communicate with folks back on the planet about what his day was like. The "Space Oddity" video just cemented his place as a key figure helping to generate interest in the space program through regular public communications with everyone in a very accessible way.

In our post, we noted that while the copyright issues were complicated, thankfully, it didn't really matter "because after a bunch of back and forth negotiations, they got all the permissions they needed directly from David Bowie." Except, as we find out today, that's not fully true. Because Commander Hadfield posted on Twitter this morning that today is the last day for the video online, because they only had a license to use it for one year. As I write, the video is still online, so watch it soon. It's got over 22 million views, and it's about to go away... because of copyright and the idea that everything needs to be licensed. This is really depressing, but it shows, once again, a situation that is destroying important cultural works, rather than helping to make them available. One would hope that David Bowie (and/or whoever else holds the copyrights in question) would recognize just how insanely bad this looks and would "grant" a perpetual free license to keep this video online. Bowie, himself, has had a rather progressive view of copyright for many years. Back in 2002, for example, Bowie declared that "I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing," and further noting that this is "terribly exciting."

Well, it's 12 years later, and copyright still exists, and the copyright on a Bowie song is about to destroy some culture. It would be nice if he was able to do something about it to stop that from happening.

And... now that there's no more license, the copyright questions come back into play... and the answer is that it's still "complicated." The copyright depends on where the video was filmed. Since the International Space Station has different sections in which technically different countries' laws apply. It is believed most or all of the video was filmed in the NASA section, meaning US laws apply. And while the US has compulsory licenses for cover songs, there may be some issues in that Hadfield modified the lyrics slightly (taking out the bit where Major Tom dies...). But, the bigger issue, unfortunately, is that sync licenses -- which allow you to "sync" music to video -- are not compulsory, and need to be licensed.

It is possible that someone could make a fair use argument here -- it's for non-commercial use, it's arguably transformative, it likely helps rather than harms the market for the original work -- but I'm not sure that would convince a judge.

Either way, I hope everyone can agree that it's just sad that this video is disappearing.

Filed Under: censorship, chris hadfield, copyright, culture, david bowie, licensing, space, sync licenses

DailyDirt: To Space And Back

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The biggest challenge to modern space exploration isn't figuring out how to do it, it's marshalling the necessary resources and support — especially for cash-strapped government agencies like NASA. Here are just a few of the latest ways that people are working to make space a little more accessible (and a little more popular).

• SpaceX has successfully tested a recoverable rocket booster that could shave millions off the cost of a space launch. The booster delivered cargo to the ISS then performed a controlled ocean landing, leaving it intact for re-use. [url]
• NASA's ongoing efforts to drum up space-excitement via social media have garnered this Tron-like crowdsourced design for a new spacesuit prototype. The agency's many PR programs are hit-and-miss, but the new suit does look pretty damn cool. [url]
• A 2008 project where Japanese children sent cherry seeds into space has resulted in something of a minor mystery, with the resultant trees blooming years ahead of schedule. The experiment wasn't strictly scientific, but the results still defy explanation, and remind us that there are still a lot of simple things we don't know about space — and plenty of reasons to keep going back. [url]

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Filed Under: exploration, nasa, space
Companies: spacex

DailyDirt: Space Exploration - The Next Generation

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Plenty of space geeks complain about the seemingly stalled progress in manned space missions, pointing out that plans to go back to the moon (or to Mars or to an asteroid) sound unlikely to happen within a Baby Boomer's lifetime. Sure, there might be some touristy flights to the near edge of space with Virgin Galactic, but really inspiring never-been-done-before space walks on another planet aren't coming any time soon (unless you count some suicide missions). Here are just a few links on the future of space transportation.

• SpaceX wants to compete with larger aerospace companies to provide its launch systems for the US Air Force. Elon Musk says, "Frankly, if our rockets are good enough for NASA, why are they not good enough for the Air Force?" [url]
• NASA's Project Morpheus is making progress in developing an autonomous landing vehicle for a variety of terrains. A recent successful flight makes it look easy to get a vehicle to land on a rocky surface. [url]
• NASA is also looking for some commercial partners to help it develop robotic lunar landers. NASA will be accepting proposals for the next couple weeks, and these potential partnerships could bring up the legality of lunar property rights if commercial companies want to mine the moon's resources. [url]

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Filed Under: elon musk, exploration, lunar lander, manned missions, mars, moon, morpheus, space
Companies: nasa, spacex, virgin galactic

DailyDirt: Curiosities In Space

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The universe is filled with unsolved mysteries and phenomena that we haven't quite figured out how to explain. It's these unanswered questions that drive science and technology forward as people try to work out how the universe operates -- and we need to build more precise and accurate instruments in order to even attempt to determine what's really going on. Here are just a few curiosities in the universe that are worth exploring a bit more.

• The oldest known star in the universe has been recently identified as SMSS J031300.362670839.3 by Australian National University scientists. This star is only 6,000 light years away from us, and it's at least 13 billion years old. However, its exact age isn't really well-known (nor is the exact age of any star really well-known), but its composition makes it an extremely early star in our universe because it contains very little iron. [url]
• A puzzling dark matter "blob" near a merging galaxy cluster called Abell 520 isn't acting the way dark matter is supposed to behave. Possible explanations for this "Train Wreck" cluster could include different forms of dark matter -- or something else we haven't thought of yet. [url]
• The largest known structure in the universe is a large quasar group (LQG) about 4 billion light years across. This group of quasars is so large that it actually puts the Cosmological Principle into question (the assumption that the universe should look the same no matter where you are, at a sufficiently large scale). [url]

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Filed Under: abell 520, astronomy, cosmological principle, dark matter, galaxy, j031300.362670839.3, large quasar group, lqg, mysteries, space, star, universe