ISS's astronaut point of view

Dear readers and followers,

This week, the +NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman from the Expedition 40 tweeted this photo from the International Space Station: "My favorite views from #space – just past #sunrise over the ocean,".

Credit image: NASA/ +Gregory Reid Wiseman

The Expedition 40 crew has been busy aboard the Space Station, recently performing health checks and humanoid robot upgrades. In the same time, a trio of orbital residents is packing up gear as they prepare to come back to home in less than two weeks. 

Commander Steve Swanson powered down and stowed Robonaut 2 after wrapping up its mobility upgrades this week. He installed new legs on the humanoid robot including external and internal gear as well as cables. This sets the stage for more upgrades in the fall before Robonaut takes its first steps as an assistant crew member. 

Robonaut was designed to enhance crew productivity and safety while also aiding people on Earth with physical disabilities.

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Satellite executive suddenly out at Google and move to SpaceX

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Google's efforts to build a network of satellites to provide Internet service to the billions of people around the world took a hit on Wednesday after reports that one of the program leads had abruptly left the company.

Credit image: AFP

Web companies such as Google and Facebook from the Silicon Valley ramp up efforts to connect the world to their services, they are increasingly looking to the skies and higher. Few months ago, Google hired Brian Holz, who was chief technology officer at O3b Networks, which has launched special satellites to try to broadcast signals that would power new Internet service in developing countries around the world. Google had previously made a financial investment in O3b and one of its employees sits on O3b’s board. The startup’s recently-launched satellites faced technical setbacks this year. Moreover, Google also recently hired Dave Bettinger, who had spent 18 years at satellite firm VT iDirect, which supplies high speed broadband and other communications to military services and the oil and gas industry, according to people at Google. VT iDirect also suffered some product delays recently.

Reports emerged in early June that Google had partnered with O3b Networks as a part of Project Loon, a project to launch low-orbit, Internet-enabled satellites. Wyler joined Google to help with the project and reported directly to chief executive Larry Page.

Google Satellite executive Greg Wyler has left Google and has reportedly been seen frequenting the SpaceX office, according to The Wall Street Journal. Neither Wyler nor the two companies have commented on his abrupt departure, which comes just months after he was hired to assist in Google's attempt at creating a global internet service. 

Although he is reportedly working in close proximity with billionaire Elon Musk, The Wall Street Journal cites sources as stating that the satellite communications expert is not a SpaceX employee. His departure also coincides with Google's loss of rights to a certain radio spectrum, which is controlled by Wyler's company WorldVu Satellites Ltd. "This could hurt Google's aspirations in this area in the short term," Mile Marker 101 CEO Neil Mackey tells The Wall Street Journal.

Earlier this year, it was reported that Wyler would be helming a Google project that would put 180 satellites in orbit as part of its bid to provide worldwide internet access.

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Russian spacecraft Foton-M4 lands successfully but all geckos lost

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Yesterday, September 1st the, troubled satellite with live geckos and other scientific experiments onboard landed in Southern Russia, according to the Russian space agency, Roskosmos. 

However all geckos were found dead after the capsule had been opened. They must be bead because of cold, annonced the Russian space agency. The touchdown of the Foton-M4 spacecraft occurred at 13:18 Moscow Summer Time. The mission of Foton-M4 thus lasted 44 days instead of 60 days, which it was expected to fly at the time of the launch.

Credit images: Russian Space Agency

The agency's press-release also claimed that an average altitude of the satellite's orbit had been 575 kilometers, exceeding that of the International Space Station, ISS. This "piece of information" was likely copied from a pre-launch announcement, because, in reality, the orbit-correction engine onboard Foton-M4 had failed to deliver the spacecraft to its planned orbit shortly after its liftoff on July 19.

However, July 24th, Russia’s space agency has re-established communication with its Foton-M4 satellite in Earth’s low orbit, three days after losing contact.

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NASA defines and presents Mars 2020 project

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Now in the planning stages of +NASA for its Martian mission, the yet-to-be-named rover vehicle will be launched to Mars in 2020 with the aim to collect martian samples. The design of the rover is similar to that of NASA's rover, Curiosity which landed in 2012.

Like NASA's Curiosity rover, Mars 2020 will land using a heat shield, parachute and "sky crane" lander that hovers using rockets while lowering the rover to the surface on cables.

Although the new rover’s science payload is less massive than Curiosity’s, scientists expect the new instruments to be more capable:

• The rover can drill up to 31 small, cylindrical core samples from rocks and store them for possible retrieval by a future mission.

• The Mars Oxygen In-situ resource utilization Experiment (MOXIE) will ingest the toxic Martian air and produce breathable oxygen from the carbon dioxide it contains. This is a proof-of-concept device, pointing the way for future astronauts’ life-support systems on Mars.

• The mast-mounted Supercam images the surface and analyzes the chemical composition and mineralogy of the rocks. Supercam also detects the presence of organic compounds from a distance. Mastcam-Z is a color stereo camera system. It has a zoom capability that we have never had on a Mars rover. It will produce stunning images from the surface of Mars, including in 3-D. It also includes a range of filters carefully selected for geologic studies. And, the zoom capability will help in the planning of drives for the rover. This instrument will be developed by French laboratories.

• The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) is an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer for examining the fine-scale elemental composition of the Martian surface.

• The Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Exploration (RIMFAX) is a ground-penetrating radar providing centimeter-scale resolution of the geologic structure beneath Mars’ surface. This instrucment will be developed by Norvegian laboratories.

• The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence of Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) spectroscope scans the ground with a laser to detect organic chemicals.

• A small mast atop the rover contains a set of sensors called the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA), measuring temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, relative humidity, and the size and shape of wind-blown dust particles.

Source: NASA

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Hubble looks at light and dark nebula in Perseus constellation

Dear readers and followers,

This new +NASA / +European Space Agency, ESA  image from Hubble Space Telescope image shows a variety of intriguing cosmic phenomena.

Surrounded by bright stars, towards the upper middle of the frame we see a small young stellar object (YSO) called SSTC2D. Located in the constellation of Perseus, this star is in the early stages of its life and is still forming into a fully grown star. In this view from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys(ACS) it appears to have a murky chimney of material emanating outwards and downwards, framed by bright bursts of gas flowing from the star itself. This fledgling star is actually surrounded by a bright disk of material swirling around it as it forms: a disc that we see edge-on from our perspective.

Credit image: +NASA / +Hubble Space Telescope 

These stars are lighting up the surrounding gas and sculpting it into the wispy shape seen in this image. However, the most dramatic part of the image seems to be a dark stream of smoke piling outwards from [B77] 63 and its stars: a dark nebula called Dobashi 4173. Dark nebulae are incredibly dense clouds of pitch-dark material that obscure the patches of sky behind them, seemingly creating great rips and eerily empty chunks of sky. The stars speckled on top of this extreme blackness actually lie between us and Dobashi 4173.

Source: NASA


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