tigas Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
21y
7,000
Subscriptor

SomewhereAroundBarstow said:
And that's as close as you're going to get an active astronaut to saying that what some people call the Deep State is actually where the heroes that keep everything from falling apart work.

What actually makes you a "steely-eyed missile man" isn't bravery, mojo, having XY chromosomes or white skin, it's to

sit in their cubicle for decades studying their systems, and knowing their systems front and back. And when there is no time to assess a situation and go and talk to people and ask, 'What do you think?' they know their system so well they come up with a plan on the fly

"Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in." //

As it flew up toward the International Space Station last summer, the Starliner spacecraft lost four thrusters. A NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore, had to take manual control of the vehicle. But as Starliner's thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move the spacecraft in the direction he wanted to go. //

Wilmore added that he felt pretty confident, in the aftermath of docking to the space station, that Starliner probably would not be their ride home.

Wilmore: "I was thinking, we might not come home in the spacecraft. We might not. And one of the first phone calls I made was to Vincent LaCourt, the ISS flight director, who was one of the ones that made the call about waiving the flight rule. I said, 'OK, what about this spacecraft, is it our safe haven?'"

It was unlikely to happen, but if some catastrophic space station emergency occurred while Wilmore and Williams were in orbit, what were they supposed to do? Should they retreat to Starliner for an emergency departure, or cram into one of the other vehicles on station, for which they did not have seats or spacesuits? LaCourt said they should use Starliner as a safe haven for the time being. Therein followed a long series of meetings and discussions about Starliner's suitability for flying crew back to Earth. Publicly, NASA and Boeing expressed confidence in Starliner's safe return with crew. But Williams and Wilmore, who had just made that harrowing ride, felt differently.

Wilmore: "I was very skeptical, just because of what we'd experienced. I just didn't see that we could make it. I was hopeful that we could, but it would've been really tough to get there, to where we could say, 'Yeah, we can come back.'"

So they did not.

Three weeks ago, NASA revealed that a shipping container protecting a Cygnus spacecraft sustained "damage" while traveling to the launch site in Florida.

Built by Northrop Grumman, Cygnus is one of two Western spacecraft currently capable of delivering food, water, experiments, and other supplies to the International Space Station. This particular Cygnus mission, NG-22, had been scheduled for June. As part of its statement in early March, the space agency said it was evaluating the NG-22 Cygnus cargo supply mission along with Northrop.

On Wednesday, after a query from Ars Technica, the space agency acknowledged that the Cygnus spacecraft designated for NG-22 is too damaged to fly, at least in the nearterm.

On Monday, the president posted a long statement on Truth Social that repeated this canard of the Biden administration, "They shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be very embarrassing event for them—another thing I inherited from that group of incompetents."

Trump then went on to state that he and Musk had just sent up a SpaceX Dragon (which, in point of fact, launched last September) to rescue the crew. //

One of the common refrains about spaceflight for decades and decades is that it is nonpartisan.

That is, the Apollo Program brought the country together in the turbulent 1960s and helped make everyone feel good about the country. Pretty much ever since then, Republicans, Democrats, and independents have generally supported NASA and civil spaceflight. //

But if we're going to start lying about basic truths like the fate of Wilmore and Williams—and let's be real, the only purpose of this lie is to paint the Trump administration as saviors in comparison to the Biden administration—then space is not going to remain apolitical for all that long. And in the long run, that would be bad for NASA.

Let's also be clear that Musk and SpaceX are currently flying the only spacecraft in the Western world that is capable of reliably flying humans into orbit. Without Dragon, NASA would have been beholden to Russia for the last five years for human spaceflight. And when Boeing's Starliner had issues nine months ago en route to the International Space Station, NASA was fortunate to have the reliable Dragon program to turn to.

Yet perverting that good news story into some tawdry political gain cheapens SpaceX, NASA, and Wilmore and Williams. In this case, the truth was beautiful. When one American space company had a problem, another stepped in, and the heroic astronauts made it home safely with a perfect backdrop.

If only the story ended there.

Intuitive Machines announced on Friday morning that its Athena mission to the surface of the Moon, which landed on its side, has ended.

"With the direction of the Sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge," the company said in a statement. "The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission."

Athena, a commercially developed lander, touched down on the lunar surface on Thursday at 11:28 am local time in Houston (17:28 UTC). The probe landed within 250 meters of its targeted landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the Moon. This is the southernmost location that any probe has landed on the Moon, within a few degrees of the lunar south pole. //

NASA has accepted that these commercial lunar missions are high-risk, high-reward. (Firefly's successful landing last weekend offers an example of high rewards). It is paying the companies, on average, $100 million or less per flight. This is a fraction of what NASA would pay through a traditional procurement program. The hope is that, after surviving initial failures, companies like Intuitive Machines will learn from their mistakes and open a low-cost, reliable pathway to the lunar surface. //

Fortunately, this is unlikely to be the end for the company. NASA has committed to a third and fourth mission on Intuitive Machines' lander, the next of which could come during the first quarter of 2026. NASA has also contracted with the company to build a small network of satellites around the Moon for communications and positioning services. So although the company's fortunes look dark today, they are not permanently shadowed like the craters on the Moon that NASA hopes to soon explore.

Q. There have been some pretty big geopolitical shifts since you went up there. What does it look like from your point of view?

Hague: Most of the time when I go over to the window, that's when I start thinking about the Earth below me. And I can tell you, in the time that I've been here, the time that I was here before six years ago, the view hasn't changed, and the thoughts that I eventually get to really haven't changed. I see Earth as a small, small orb that's in a pretty big black vastness of space. And there's a lot out there. There are more stars than you can count, but the world looks pretty small when it's in that perspective. And as you fly from continent to continent, you don't necessarily see all of those borders. And the lesson, or the realization that I always come away with is we have far more in common than we have in different, and those common things that we have bring us together. And if, if we're smart, those differences that we have are differences that we bring to teams like the International Space Station, and those differences make the team stronger.

"Every single thing was clockwork... We got some Moon dust on our boots." //

Firefly Aerospace became the first commercial company to make a picture-perfect landing on the Moon early Sunday, touching down on an ancient basaltic plain, named Mare Crisium, to fulfill a $101 million contract with NASA.

The lunar lander, called Blue Ghost, settled onto the Moon's surface at 2:34 am CST (3:34 am EST; 08:34 UTC). A few dozen engineers in Firefly's mission control room monitored real-time data streaming down from a quarter-million miles away.

This unusual photograph, taken during the second Apollo 12 extravehicular activity (EVA), shows two U.S. spacecraft on the surface of the moon. The Apollo 12 Lunar Module (LM) is in the background. The unmanned Surveyor 3 spacecraft is in the foreground. The Apollo 12 LM, with astronauts Charles Conrad Jr. and Alan L. Bean aboard, landed about 600 feet from Surveyor 3 in the Ocean of Storms. The television camera and several other pieces were taken from Surveyor 3 and brought back to Earth for scientific examination. Here, Conrad examines the Surveyor's TV camera prior to detaching it. Astronaut Richard F. Gordon Jr. remained with the Apollo 12 Command and Service Modules (CSM) in lunar orbit while Conrad and Bean descended in the LM to explore the moon. Surveyor 3 soft-landed on the moon on April 19, 1967.

She broke barriers at NASA and contributed to its earliest space missions as a rocket scientist, mathematician and computer programmer.

Annie Easley was a member of the team at NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland (now the Glenn Research Center) given the critical task of fixing the Centaur’s design. Unlike most people working on the project, she was not an engineer. She hadn’t even finished college. But she was an excellent mathematician and computer programmer who was adept at solving problems.

The Department of Defense had concluded that the Centaur would not be ready for at least several more years, a critical setback for the country.

But 18 months later, on Nov. 27, 1963, the redesigned rocket system successfully blasted into space. It was the beginning of a new era in spaceflight, and Easley’s calculations had been vital to the mission. //

Easley had been hired in 1955 to work at Lewis as a human computer — one of a group of gifted women who calculated and solved complex mathematical problems before there were mechanical computers powerful enough to do the work.

The 2016 book and film “Hidden Figures” memorialized the work of some of these pioneers. Like the women depicted in that history, Easley was Black and had to overcome obstacles to succeed, but she did not let that stop her.

“When people have their biases and prejudices, yes, I am aware. My head is not in the sand,” she said in a 2001 oral history interview for NASA. “But my thing is, if I can’t work with you, I will work around you.”

The agency tasked government labs, research institutions, and commercial companies to come up with better ideas to bring home the roughly 30 sealed sample tubes carried aboard the Perseverance rover. NASA deposited 10 sealed tubes on the surface of Mars a couple of years ago as insurance in case Perseverance dies before the arrival of a retrieval mission.

"We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back," Nelson said. //

"It has been more than two years since NASA paused work on MSR," the Planetary Society said. "It is time to commit to a path forward to ensure the return of the samples already being collected by the Perseverance rover.

"We urge the incoming Trump administration to expedite a decision on a path forward for this ambitious project, and for Congress to provide the funding necessary to ensure the return of these priceless samples from the Martian surface."
China says it is developing its own mission to bring Mars rocks back to Earth. Named Tianwen-3, the mission could launch as soon as 2028 and return samples to Earth by 2031. While NASA's plan would bring back carefully curated samples from an expansive environment that may have once harbored life, China's mission will scoop up rocks and soil near its landing site.

"They’re just going to have a mission to grab and go—go to a landing site of their choosing, grab a sample and go," Nelson said. "That does not give you a comprehensive look for the scientific community. So you cannot compare the two missions. Now, will people say that there’s a race? Of course, people will say that, but it’s two totally different missions."

Still, Nelson said he wants NASA to be first. He said he has not had detailed conversations with Trump's NASA transition team.

The first human mission to land on the Moon is one of the only NASA mission patches that does not include the names of the crew members, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. This was a deliberate choice by the crew, who wanted the world to understand they were traveling to the Moon for all of humanity.

Another NASA astronaut, Jim Lovell, suggested the bald eagle could be the focus of the patch. Collins traced the eagle from a National Geographic children's magazine, and an olive branch was added as a symbol of the mission's peaceful intent.

The result is a clear symbol of the United States leading humanity to another world. It is simple and powerful. //

With the space shuttle, astronauts and patch artists had to get more creative because the vehicle flew so frequently—eventually launching 135 times. Some of my favorite patches from these flights came fairly early on in the program.

As it turns out, designing shuttle mission patches was a bonding exercise for crews after their assignments. Often one of the less experienced crew members would be given leadership of the project.

"During the Shuttle era, designing a mission emblem was one of the first tasks assigned to a newly formed crew of astronauts," Flag Research Quarterly reports. "Within NASA, creation of the patch design was considered to be an important team-building exercise. The crew understood that they were not just designing a patch to wear on their flight suits, but that they were also creating a symbol for everyone who was working on the flight."

In some cases the crews commissioned a well-known graphic designer or space artist to help them with their patch designs. More typically they worked with a graphic designer on staff at the Johnson Space Center to finalize the design. //

In recent years, some of the most creative patch designs have come from SpaceX and its crewed spaceflights aboard the Dragon vehicle. Because of the spacecraft's name, the missions have often played off the Dragon motif, making for some striking designs.

There is a dedicated community of patch collectors out there, and some of them were disappointed that SpaceX stopped designing patches for each individual Starlink mission a few years ago. However, I would say that buying two or three patches a week would have gotten pretty expensive, pretty fast—not to mention the challenge designers would face in making unique patches for each flight.

If you read this far and want to know my preference, I am not much of a patch collector, as much as I admire the effort and artistry that goes into each design. I have only ever bought one patch, the one designed for the Falcon 1 rocket's fourth flight. The patch isn't beautiful, but it's got some nice touches, including lights for both Kwajalein and Omelek islands, where the company launched its first rockets. Also, it was the first time the company included a shamrock on the patch, and that proved fortuitous, as the successful launch in 2008 saved the company. It has become a trademark of SpaceX patches ever since.

Almost no one ever writes about the Parker Solar Probe anymore.

Sure, the spacecraft got some attention when it launched. It is, after all, the fastest moving object that humans have ever built. At its maximum speed, goosed by the gravitational pull of the Sun, the probe reaches a velocity of 430,000 miles per hour, or more than one-sixth of 1 percent the speed of light. That kind of speed would get you from New York City to Tokyo in less than a minute. //

However, the smallish probe—it masses less than a metric ton, and its scientific payload is only about 110 pounds (50 kg)—is about to make its star turn. Quite literally. On Christmas Eve, the Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the Sun. It will come within just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) of the solar surface, flying into the solar atmosphere for the first time.

Yeah, it's going to get pretty hot. Scientists estimate that the probe's heat shield will endure temperatures in excess of 2,500° Fahrenheit (1,371° C) on Christmas Eve, which is pretty much the polar opposite of the North Pole. //

I spoke with the chief of science at NASA, Nicky Fox, to understand why the probe is being tortured so. Before moving to NASA headquarters, Fox was the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, and she explained that scientists really want to understand the origins of the solar wind.

This is the stream of charged particles that emanate from the Sun's outermost layer, the corona. Scientists have been wondering about this particular mystery for longer than half a century, Fox explained.

"Quite simply, we want to find the birthplace of the solar wind," she said.

Way back in the 1950s, before we had satellites or spacecraft to measure the Sun's properties, Parker predicted the existence of this solar wind. The scientific community was pretty skeptical about this idea—many ridiculed Parker, in fact—until the Mariner 2 mission started measuring the solar wind in 1962.

As the scientific community began to embrace Parker's theory, they wanted to know more about the solar wind, which is such a fundamental constituent of the entire Solar System. Although the solar wind is invisible to the naked eye, when you see an aurora on Earth, that's the solar wind interacting with Earth's magnetosphere in a particularly violent way.

Only it is expensive to build a spacecraft that can get to the Sun. And really difficult, too.

Now, you might naively think that it's the easiest thing in the world to send a spacecraft to the Sun. After all, it's this big and massive object in the sky, and it's got a huge gravitational field. Things should want to go there because of this attraction, and you ought to be able to toss any old thing into the sky, and it will go toward the Sun. The problem is that you don't actually want your spacecraft to fly into the Sun or be going so fast that it passes the Sun and keeps moving. So you've got to have a pretty powerful rocket to get your spacecraft in just the right orbit. //

But you can't get around the fact that to observe the origin of the solar wind, you've got to get inside the corona. Fox explained that it's like trying to understand a forest by looking in from the outside. One actually needs to go into the forest and find a clearing. However, we can't really stay inside the forest very long—because it's on fire.

So, the Parker Solar Probe had to be robust enough to get near the Sun and then back into the coldness of space. Therein lies another challenge. The spacecraft is going from this incredibly hot environment into a cold one and then back again multiple times.

"If you think about just heating and cooling any kind of material, they either go brittle and crumble, or they may go like elastic with a continual change of property," Fox said. "Obviously, with a spacecraft like this, you can't have it making a major property change. You also need something that's lightweight, and you need something that's durable."

The science instruments had to be hardened as well. As the probe flies into the Sun there's an instrument known as a Faraday cup that hangs out to measure ion and electron fluxes from the solar wind. Unique technologies were needed. The cup itself is made from sheets of Titanium-Zirconium-Molybdenum, with a melting point of about 4,260° Fahrenheit (2,349° C). Another challenge came from the electronic wiring, as normal cables would melt. So, a team at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory grew sapphire crystal tubes in which to suspend the wiring, and made the wires from niobium.

Taking stock of spaceflight one-quarter of the way through the 2000s. //

2. Ingenuity flies on Mars
   Almost everyone reading this article remembers the seven minutes of terror associated with the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2012. A similar thing happened nine years later when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars (this time, with some amazing video of the dynamic experience). Yet as cool as these landings were, and as impressive as the capabilities of Curiosity and Perseverance are, a tiny payload named Ingenuity carried by Perseverance stole the show on Mars. //

3. Falcon Heavy launch, dual rocket landing
   By popular demand, this mission in February 2018 ranks in the top spot. The visuals were irresistible. The rocket launch itself was impressive, with the combination of 27 Merlin rocket engines generating a brightness that one almost had to look away from. Then the twin boosters separated and returned to Earth, landing like a pair of synchronized swimmers. Finally, there was the arresting view of a cherry red Tesla (and Starman) flying away from Earth in the general direction of Mars.

It was a spectacle that understandably captured the public’s attention. But the new rocket was more than a spectacle. By designing, building, and launching the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX demonstrated that a private company could independently fund and fly the largest and most powerful rocket in the world. This showed that commercial, heavy-lift rockets were possible. By providing competition to the Delta IV Heavy, the Falcon Heavy saved the US government billions. It's likely that the US government will never design and develop a rocket ever again.

Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars.

In short, the helicopter's on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features in the relatively smooth surface of Mars to determine its position, so when it touched down, it did so moving horizontally. This caused the vehicle to tumble, snapping off all four of the helicopter's blades.

It is not easy to conduct a forensic analysis like this on Mars, which is typically about 100 million miles from Earth. Ingenuity carried no black box on board, so investigators have had to piece together their findings from limited data and imagery.

"While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with," said Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a news release. //

Amazingly, the vehicle was able to recharge somewhat with its solar panels and is continuing to communicate about once a week with the Perseverance rover that brought it to Mars in February 2021. This will last a little while longer before the rover and helicopter lose line-of-sight communications.

The remarkable success of Ingenuity has prompted NASA engineers to already begin planning for possible follow-on missions, including a larger "Mars Chopper" that could carry scientific instruments to study areas inaccessible to rovers.

The Voyager probes have entered a new phase of operations. As recent events have shown, keeping the venerable spacecraft running is challenging as the end of their mission nears.

As with much of the Voyager team nowadays, Kareem Badaruddin, a 30-year veteran of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), divides his time between the twin Voyager spacecraft and other flight projects. He describes himself as a supervisor of chief engineers but leaped at the chance to fill the role on the Voyager project. //

With physical hardware long gone, the team has an array of simulators. "We have a very clear understanding of the hardware," said Badaruddin. "We know exactly what the circuitry is, what the computers are, and where the software runs."

And the software? It's complicated.

There have been so many tweaks and changes over the years that working out the exact revision of every part of Voyager's code is tricky. "It's usually easier to just get a memory readout from the spacecraft to find out what's on there," said Badaruddin.

We're sure there are more than a few engineers on Earth who are not entirely sure what their systems are running. The challenge for the Voyager team is that the spacecraft are nearing the half-century mark, as is the documentation. //

The Voyager spacecraft are unlikely to survive another decade. The power will eventually dwindle to the point where operations will be impossible. High data rates (relatively speaking – Voyager's high data rate is 1.4 kilobits per second) will only be supported by the current Deep Space Network (DSN) until 2027 or 2028. After that, some more creativity will be needed to operate Voyager 1's digital tape recorder.

Badaruddin speculates that shutting off another heater (the Bay One heater) used for the computers would free up power for the recorder, according to the thermal model, but it'll be a delicate balancing act. //

Badaruddin hopes to stick with the mission until the final transmission from the spacecraft.

"I love Voyager. I love this work. I love what I'm doing. It's so cool. It just feels like I've got the best job at JPL." ®. //

The Farthest
The Farthest is an excellent documentary on Voyager produced by a friend of mine, Clare Stronge.

Watch it here - https://youtu.be/1g6uFe3vZE0?si=BIQR-GjLt1E2a4Xh

thinkreal Ars Praetorian
22y
573
I’m still boggled by the contrast of approaches to engineering. How long have the Orion team been wringing hands over heat shield tiles after some anomalous but not disastrous effects? SpaceX - “let’s rip off a couple thousand tiles and see how the steel holds up, next year we want to try some new hardware somewhere around there” //

AverageDutchGuy Ars Scholae Palatinae
5y
822
Super3DPC said:
3 things that surprise me on this flight:

1. How routine it feels. I no longer hurry to catch the launch live. I wait until the whole thing is over and skip the video forward a few times. 6 launches this and it's almost boring already. I'm just too spoiled.
2. After re-entry we can see parts of Starship stainless steel change color to have rainbow tint. Can those skin be reuse without changing them? Rainbow tint on stainless means excessive oxidation IIRC.
3. I thought they'd use RCS to reorient Starship before engine relight. I mean the whole point of relight test is to make sure Starship can re-enter the atmosphere right? Can't do re-enter atmosphere without RCS reorienting Starship before re-entry burn right?

Rainbow discoloration on stainless just means a (thin) oxidation film has happened (and the color can be a nice indicator of what temperature was reached (for the dark purple to dark blue observed on the ship it would be between 450 to 600 degrees centigrade respectively, with bright blue being reached around 540) If it didn't deform I see no reason why it would have to be replaced, unless excessive tempering would occur in the likely cold-rolled skin material and ultimate strength was impacted.

Edit to add: heat range given is accurate for AISI304, since Starship uses (iirc) AISI 301 it might be slightly off. Source: https://bssa.org.uk/bssa_articles/heat-tint-temper-colours-on-stainless-steel-surface-heated-in-air/. //

Endymio Smack-Fu Master, in training
2m
53
jeremyp66 said:
Reusable spacecraft have been done before.

None anywhere near this size and scale.

jeremyp66 said:
for perspective, the sixth launch of Saturn V put two men on the Moon.

At a cost of several percent of the nation's total GDP: roughly $290 billion in 2024 dollars. Musk is doing it for a little over 1% of this.

jeremyp66 said:
OK so let's stop pretending that SpaceX is doing this "privately". Starship is substantially funded by the US tax payers. Starship is part of Artemis.

No, more precisely, the preexisting Starship concept is being used in Artemis, among many other things. That's how Musk was able to underbid the competition. His original Artemis bid was ~$2.8B: competitors ranged from $4B to $10B, for proposals which were less competent and flexible as well. All the Artemis funds are only about a third of Starship's R&D costs alone, not even counting the operational costs of the moon mission itself. //

Endymio Smack-Fu Master, in training
2m
53
MagicDot said:
Another very small step forward, almost matching the achievements of 1962.

Saturn V put 2 men on the moon -- by throwing away the vast majority of the hardware used to get there. Starship will place 100 on the moon, plus cargo, at a cost of ~1% of Saturn V ... and keep all that pricey hardware to boot.

MagicDot said:
That definitely is an acid test...and Elon is clearly on acid to think he's pulling that off in his lifetime.

Interesting. I recall the exact thing said about Tesla's ability to compete against entrenched automakers, or their ability to manufacture their own batteries at scale, or SpaceX's ability to manufacture reusable rockets or launch a 6000+ satellite constellation.

NASA spent millions on DEI and ‘Environmental Justice’ grants while laying off real scientists doing actual research and innovation. //

In an exclusive report, the UK Daily Mail says NASA staffers want President-Elect Donald Trump’s co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk to ‘clean house’, as insiders reveal the agency squandered millions of taxpayer money on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. //

Paula | November 18, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Democrats fear Elon Musk. And for good reason. He’s half Einstein and half honey badger.

NASA uncovers 50 ‘areas of concern’ including leaks and cracks on the 25-year-old space station. //

Over the past two decades, the ISS has been a hub for groundbreaking scientific research. The microgravity environment has enabled significant advancements in studying diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, asthma, and heart disease. The unique conditions allow researchers to observe cellular and molecular changes impossible on Earth.

Without the interference of Earth’s gravity, Alzheimer’s researchers have studied protein clusters that can cause neurodegenerative diseases. Cancer researchers studied the growth of endothelial cells on the space station.

Endothelial cells help supply blood in the body, and tumors need that blood to form. Space station-grown cells grow better than those on Earth and can help test new cancer treatments.

Why do this in space? Studying cells, organoids, and protein clusters without the influence of gravity – or even the forces of container walls – can help researchers get a clearer understanding of their properties, behaviors, and responses to treatments.

Bloomberg calls for cancellation of the SLS rocket. In an op-ed that is critical of NASA's Artemis Program, billionaire Michael Bloomberg—the founder of Bloomberg News and a former US Presidential candidate—called for cancellation of the Space Launch System rocket. "Each launch will likely cost at least $4 billion, quadruple initial estimates," Bloomberg wrote. "This exceeds private-sector costs many times over, yet it can launch only about once every two years and—unlike SpaceX’s rockets—can’t be reused."

The space suits worn during SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission are a sci-fi reimagining of NASA’s classic marshmallow suits. There’s a good reason why they look so different.