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Tag: Space Flight

  • SpaceX Announces First All-Commercial Space Flight

    SpaceX Announces First All-Commercial Space Flight

    SpaceX has announced the first-ever all-commercial space flight, consisting exclusively of civilian pilot and passengers.

    SpaceX has been on the forefront of commercializing space travel, and today’s announcement is a major step in that direction. The mission, named “Inspiration4,” is targeting the fourth quarter of 2021 at the earliest.

    The flight will be piloted by Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments. He is also donating the remaining three seats to members of the general public.

    The Inspiration4 crew will receive commercial astronaut training by SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity, zero gravity, and other forms of stress testing. They will go through emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, as well as partial and full mission simulations.

    This multi-day journey, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes along a customized flight path, will be carefully monitored at every step by SpaceX mission control. Upon conclusion of the mission, Dragon will reenter Earth’s atmosphere for a soft water landing off the coast of Florida.

    It’s a safe bet Inspiration4 will soon be followed by other flights of its kind, further democratizing space travel.

  • New Crew Lifts Off to the International Space Station [VIDEO]

    The next crew of the International Space Station (ISS) has left the Earth. The Expedition 34 crew today lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:12 am EST.

    The crew consists of NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield. The crew is currently riding the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft and is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Friday morning.

    The trio are expected to stay on the ISS until May of next year. They will join three people already onboard the space station – Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford and Roscosmos Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who have been on the station since October. Hadfield will become the first Canadian commander of the ISS in March, when the current crew of the space station returns to earth.

    The focus of this expedition, according to NASA, is scientific research including human physiology tests. The crew will serve as subjects for the examination of astronaut bone loss while also conducting experiments (such as on how fire behaves in space), observations of Earth, human research, and technology demonstrations.

    The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft was captured by NASA, and can be seen below. Temperatures were far below freezing at the time of the launch.

  • Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Eyes!

    Bad news for the corporations who have begun colonizing Mars. Researchers from The University of Texas Medical School in Houston have been doing some tests on people who have spent extended periods of time in space and their finding are not good. For those who spent more than a month in space there was increased pressure in their skulls. Sound pretty terrible!

    Symptoms that are likely to occur as a result of the pressure include inability to or trouble focusing, pituitary gland malfunction, excessive spinal fluid build-up around the eyes, and swelling of the optic nerve. This is some Event Horizon stuff! Not good! This could have serious implications for further space exploration. Thank god for unmanned probes.

    Professor Larry Kramer, researcher lead author on the study commented on the MRI finding connected with the abnormalities:

    “The MRI findings revealed various combinations of abnormalities following both short and long-term cumulative exposure to microgravity also seen with idiopathic intracranial hypertension.”

    According to NASA, this adds to a long list of muscular and skelatol aches and pains many astronauts experience as a result of space exploration. They are taking the research findings into consideration, but have not used them to disqualify any of their explorers from missions yet.

    Here’s some Twitter reaction:

    (image)@jason_koebler
    Jason Koebler    Study: Astronauts’ brains show abnormalities, @nasa working to find cause, save any hope for #spacedomes http://t.co/iwZ5nuZX(image) 20 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@kyleykim
    Kyle Kim    Long space missions may damage astronauts’ eyes, brains: study | GlobalPost http://t.co/RJ8eSSDY #space #nasa(image) 22 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@Pope_BaneXXIII
    Darth Impietas    Study finds eye problems common for astronauts http://t.co/rPediYf8 @abcnews #NASA Microgravity-induced intracranial hypertension(image) 20 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@Chris_Hsu
    Christine Hsu    NASA Astronauts Brain Scans Reveal Tissue and Eye Damage After Space Flight http://t.co/hcKswuqd #in #space #NASA #health(image) 20 hours ago via bitly ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@FCI_Ophthalmics
    FCI Ophthalmics    RT @vbeye: Astronauts with 20/20 vision found they needed glasses for the first time after long spaceflight.
    http://t.co/1zRhmWEr(image) 55 minutes ago via HootSuite ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@JerryArbs
    Jerry Arbs    Turns out being in space equals out body pressure and squeezes your eyes! 27 astronauts were tested and had changes in vision! #Uhoh #Space(image) 1 hour ago via Twitter for Android ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@LD_Penticton
    London Drugs #70    I’d still do it. RT @joyce_johnson: Space flight linked to eye, brain problems http://t.co/DrrBEQMM(image) 11 hours ago via HootSuite ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Hopefully researchers can learn enough to find ways to combat the problem and relieve the excess pressure caused by the loss of gravity. Swelling of the eyes and brain sounds pretty serious to me. I doubt this will prevent anybody from going to space, but there could be severe complications for spending a lot of time in space.