This is the Habitat in Hawaii Helping Astronauts Preparing to Explore Mars

Your daily selection of the latest science news!

According to Universe Today (This article and its images were originally posted on Universe Today August 31, 2018 at 01:59PM.)

When it comes time to send astronauts to Mars, those who make the journey will need to be ready for a number of challenges. In addition to enduring about six-months in space both ways, the first astronauts to explore Mars will also need to be prepared to spend months living on the surface. This will consist of long periods spent in a pressurized habitat and regular forays to the surface wearing pressure suits.

Preparing astronauts for this kind of living situation is the purpose behind the NASA-funded Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (Hi-SEAS), an exercise that has been taking place since 2013 site on the Hawaiian mountain of Mauna Loa. In February of 2018, the Mission VI crew began an eight month-long research study of human behavior and performance, which will apparently involve a lot of spelunking!

Located on the northern slop of Mauna Loa, Hawaii’s largest volcano, the Hi-SEAS habitat is situated at an abandoned quarry site roughly 2,400 meters (8,000 feet) above sea level. This barren area, which contains sparse vegetation and overlapping lava flows, was specifically selected because of the similarities it has to terrain on Mars – which also has large, gently sloping shield volcanoes and exposed lava flows.

Full Atricle | Stay current with our live science feed.

• Got any news, tips or want to contact us directly? Feel free to email us: esistme@gmail.com.

To see more posts like these; please subscribe to our newsletter. By entering a valid email, you’ll receive top trending reports delivered to your inbox.
__

This article and its images were originally posted on [Universe Today] August 31, 2018 at 01:59PM. All credit to both the author Matt Williams and Universe Today | ESIST.T>G>S Recommended Articles Of The Day.

 

Donations are appreciated and go directly to supporting ESIST.Tech. Thank you in advance for helping us to continue to be a part of your online entertainment!

 

 

 

Space for Humanity seeks 10,000 citizen astronauts

Space for Humanity is considering purchasing rides for participants on Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable, suborbital rocket, which has undergone multiple test flights, and may take tourists into space as early as 2018. Credit: Blue Origin

SAN FRANCISCO — To date, only 536 people have traveled to space and the vast majority have been men from a handful of nations. Dylan Taylor, a space industry angel investor and SpaceNews columnist,  is eager to share the experience with 10,000 people through a nonprofit organization, Space for Humanity, that will pay for the trips.

“We are going to mint new astronauts from all communities,” Taylor said June 27 at the annual NewSpace conference here. “We want to influence public policy and opinion… by changing the mindset.”

Space for Humanity is beginning to solicit nominations through its website for people from diverse backgrounds to travel to space or near space and return to Earth to serve as ambassadors who can share their experiences.

Dylan Taylor, a space industry angel investor and SpaceNews columnist.

“We are not going to send multimillionaire white males who can afford to go,” Taylor said. “When those people come back and talk about their experience, someone who lives in New Delhi who makes $1 a day is not necessarily going to relate to that experience. We need to send someone from their community who can share their experience.”

Through its efforts, Space for Humanity intends to increase global funding for space. “People will come back and influence their communities to get excited about space,” Taylor said. “Space funding will increase because people will see the benefit it has to the way people relate to the world, the way people relate to problems and the way people view themselves.”

Space for Humanity has not yet decided how it will fly the new astronauts. “We are vehicle agnostic as long as it’s safe, reliable and somewhat economical,” Taylor said.

For example, Space for Humanity is considering purchasing rides for participants in World View Enterprises’ high-altitude balloon and Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle because both will give “diverse participants a group experience,” Taylor said.

Taylor and a group of donors he cannot yet name plan to provide Space for Humanity with initial funding of $10 million over 24 months. “Successful missions will help us raise additional funding,” Taylor told SpaceNews.

__

This article and images was originally posted on [SpaceNews.com] June 29, 2017 at 03:06PM

by Debra Werner

 

 

 

NASA Astronauts Are Close to Identifying Unknown Microbe Colonies That Grow in Space

The International Space Station (ISS) is usually a pretty clean place. But where there are people, there are microorganisms.

And when you’re trapped in a giant hunk of metal some 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the surface of Earth, you really want to know what that furry white stuff is growing in the corner.

Right now, the only way to test contaminants of the space station is to collect samples and send them down to the planet.

“We have had contamination in parts of the station where fungi was seen growing or biomaterial has been pulled out of a clogged waterline, but we have no idea what it is until the sample gets back down to the lab,” says NASA microbiologist Sarah Wallace.

Normally it’s not such a big deal for astronauts, who have a ready supply of disinfectants on hand, but we’d want to be able to do those tests right there in space, especially once future missions move beyond the safe cocoon of Earth’s relative proximity.

“As we move beyond low-Earth orbit where the ability for resupply is less frequent, knowing what to disinfect or not becomes very important,” says Wallace.

That’s why NASA has been working on a new project, Genes in Space-3. Its goal is to establish a user-friendly system for astronauts to sequence DNA of various microorganisms aboard the ISS.

“The Genes in Space-3 experiments demonstrate ways in which portable, real-time DNA sequencing can be used to assay microbial ecology, diagnose infectious diseases and monitor crew health aboard the ISS,” explains the project website.

Just last year, molecular biologist and astronaut Kate Rubins was the first person to ever sequence DNA in space. She used a small device called MinION, which relies on nanopore technology to analyse DNA and RNA in real time.

Devices such as MinION are routinely used in the field to track the spread of diseases like Ebola and Zika, or studying environmental samples in places like Antarctica.

But before Rubins successfully used MinION on the ISS, nobody was sure if it would work in microgravity. For the test, investigators sent up ready-made samples of mouse, viral, and bacterial DNA, and then compared Rubins’s results against tests done on the same samples back on Earth.

If we’re ever going to evade superbugs and detect aliens, what we really want is the ability to identify unknown organisms right there in space. And to do that, we need technology to prepare those samples.

Fortunately, NASA also has a device called miniPCR. It was designed by 17-year-old student Anna-Sophia Boguraev for the inaugural Genes in Space competition.

Boguraev’s invention is a handy, ISS-friendly version of a device needed to perform polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on a DNA sample so that it can be analysed.

Anna-Sophia Boguraev with miniPCR. Credit: NASA

By joining the two technologies, NASA now has a workable solution to prepare, sequence, and identify microorganisms from start to finish right there on the space station.

“What the coupling of these different devices is doing is allowing us to take the lab to the samples, instead of us having to bring the samples to the lab,” says NASA biochemist Aaron Burton.

This is good news for all future astronauts, as it will be extremely useful if there’s ever something weird growing on the walls of the space station.

“Onboard sequencing makes it possible for the crew to know what is in their environment at any time,” Wallace, who is the project’s chief investigator, said last year. “That allows us on the ground to take appropriate action – do we need to clean this up right away, or will taking antibiotics help or not?”

Besides, ISS is basically a giant space laboratory, and adding these molecular biology tools to its arsenal will help with many other experiments aboard. And it’s possible that one day we’ll be taking these tools to Mars and beyond.

Who knows if we’ll be sequencing alien life any time soon (come on, Enceladus), but at least when we stumble across it, we’ll come prepared.

__

Join our fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, Google+, feedly, flipboardand Instagram.

Check out our Flipboard magazine ESIST  If you enjoy reading our posts. All of our handpicked articles will be delivered to the flipboard magazine every day.

This article and images was originally posted on ScienceAlert 

by SIGNE DEAN

 

 

 

SpaceX Launching Lightning Tracker, ‘Three-Eyed’ Raven, Deadly Superbug for NASA

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured this view of lightning over the Pacific Ocean at night. One new tool heading to the station, the Lightning Imaging Sensor, will track the more than 45 lightning strikes per second that hit Earth.

Credit: NASA

---

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX is gearing up to launch its 10th commercial cargo mission on Saturday morning (Feb. 18), ferrying supplies and an assortment of science investigations to the International Space Station — including a deadly superbug, an advanced lightning sensor, a tool for new autonomous rendezvous capabilities and more.

Perched atop an upgraded Falcon 9 booster, the Dragon spacecraft will lift off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A — marking the first time a vehicle has launched from the historic pad since the final, 2011 shuttle mission.

Once in orbit, the Dragon will spend two days chasing down the International Space Station. The six crewmembers on board have been preparing for the Dragon’s arrival, which is slated for Monday, July 20. At approximately 11:30 a.m. EST (16:30 GMT), European astronaut Thomas Pesquet will use the space station’s 57.7-foot (17.6 meters) robotic arm to grapple the craft, assisted by NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough. [These SpaceX Rocket Landing Photos Are Simply Jaw-Dropping]

The vehicle will remain berthed at the space station for about a month. During that time the crew will unload its provisions, including close to 5,500 lbs. (2,500 kilograms) of research supplies and science experiments. When Dragon’s mission is over, it will carry an estimated 5,000 lbs. (2,270 kg) of cargo back to Earth.

At a news briefing on Wednesday, Feb. 8, several researchers detailed their experiments, which are currently tucked inside the Dragon.

This mission includes a plethora of student-designed investigations, including one led by a pair of 17-year-old students from Craft Academy at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky. The students, Danielle Gibson and Will Castro, kicked off the briefing by outlining an experiment that will evaluate smooth muscle cells from rats (a type of cell commonly found in arteries and veins) to test theories about how muscles contract in the microgravity environment. Gibson and Castro explained that “significant physiological differences” have been observed when muscles contract in space versus on the ground. The goal of their research is to explore those differences in more detail, which could lead to better treatments for health conditions such as high blood pressure.

Paul Reichert of Merck Research Laboratories, whose investigation is also heading to the station, said that it focuses on the crystallization growth of human monoclonal antibodies — a type of protein that researchers suspect may play a role in combating myriad diseases, including cancer. Crystallizing proteins lets scientists better understand how they function, allowing for the creation of more effective treatments.

“This research will improve the way we produce products here on Earth,” Reichert said during the briefing.

Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, was on hand to discuss two of the agency’s Earth science payloads that will be carried in the Dragon’s trunk: the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) instrument and the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS).

Both payloads will be externally mounted on the station, with SAGE III set to measure the Earth’s natural sunscreen — ozone — along with other gases and aerosols, or tiny particles in the atmosphere. To make its measurements, SAGE III will lock its view onto the sun or moon and scan the thin sliver of Earth’s atmosphere visible as it passes by.

The new LIS will help scientists better understand lightning, which strikes 45 times per second around the world, by taking measurements 24 hours a day.

The sensor will record several measurements including the number of strikes, and the frequency and energy output of each strike. A similar instrument is installed on the GOES-16 satellite, which launched in November 2016 and is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). [Earth from Space: The Amazing Photos by the GOES-16 Satellite]

Both sensors will work in tandem, allowing scientists to study data from multiple latitudes across the globe. Ben Reed, deputy division director of the Satellite Servicing Projects Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, discussed Raven, a technology demonstration that’s designed to test autonomous rendezvous capability on the International Space Station.

Current spacecraft operate in low-Earth orbit, which means they can be controlled from the ground. In the future, robotic spacecraft might be operating thousands of miles from Earth, beyond the reach of the space station or ground control. Advanced autopilot systems are needed to help such spacecraft safely navigate and rendezvous with other objects.

The goal of the Raven investigation is to study the feasibility of a real-time spacecraft navigation system that would provide the eyes and intelligence a spacecraft needs to see a target and steer toward it safely. The researchers hope that the investigation will help to enable future exploration missions near Earth and beyond, including satellite servicing and repair.

Developed by the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO), Raven is equipped with visible light, LIDAR and infrared sensors to scan vehicles visiting the space station over a two-year period.

The next research investigation that was presented may sound like something out of a science-fiction horror story, but the researchers explained there’s no danger to the crew. As part of a NASA-funded study, led by Dr. Anita Goel, Nanobiosym is partnering with CASIS — the company tasked with managing the space station’s national laboratory — to send a batch of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (aka MRSA) into space, sealed in three levels of containment.

MRSA is common in hospitals, and in the United States alone, MRSA is notorious for killing more Americans in a single year than the combined total of deaths from emphysema, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s disease and homicide.

So why would NASA want to send such a deadly strain of bacteria into space? Dr. Goel explained that by exposing the bacteria to a microgravity environment, researchers may be able to better understand how MRSA mutates.

MRSA is renowned for its resistance to antibodies. “Microgravity may accelerate the rate of bacterial mutations,” Dr. Goel told Space.com. “If we can predict future mutations before they happen, we can build better drugs.”

—

Join our fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, Google+, feedly, flipboardand Instagram.

Check out our Flipboard magazine ESIST  If you enjoy reading our posts. All of our handpicked articles will be delivered to the flipboard magazine every day.

This article was posted on space.com

By Amy Thompson

 

 

 

Chinese Astronauts Dock with Tiangong-2 Space Lab

Artist’s illustration of China’s Tiangong-2 space lab docked with a crewed Shenzhou spacecraft.

Credit: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation

A Chinese spacecraft carrying two astronauts has successfully docked with the uncrewed Tiangong-2 space lab, according to Chinese media reports.

The Shenzhou-11 spacecraft linked up with Tiangong-2 at 3:24 p.m. EDT (1924 GMT) today (Oct. 18; 3:24 a.m. Oct. 19 Beijing time), while both spacecraft were zipping around Earth at an altitude of 244 miles (393 kilometers), China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Though Shenzhou-11 carries two crewmembers, named Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, the docking was completely automated.

Jing and Chen will soon enter Tiangong-2, then stay aboard the orbiting lab for 30 days. The duo are undertaking China’s longest-ever crewed space mission; they lifted off on Sunday (Oct. 16) and will be in orbit for a total of 33 days if all goes according to plan, Xinhua reported.

The 34-foot-long (10.4 meters) Tiangong-2 launched to orbit on Sept. 15. The 9.5-ton module is China’s second-ever space lab; the first, Tiangong-1, reached space in September 2011 and hosted three dockings — two of them involving crewed Shenzhou spacecraft — before ending its operational life this past March.

Tiangong-1 will likely fall to Earth in late 2017, Chinese space officials have said.

The Tiangong program is designed to test out the rendezvous and docking technologies that China will need to build a bona fide space station, which the nation aims to have up and running by the early 2020s.

China’s space station will likely be considerably smaller than the 440-ton, $100 billion International Space Station; various reports have estimated that China’s orbiting complex will tip the scales at about 60 tons.

Shenzhou-11 is China’s first crewed spaceflight in more than three years. The most recent such effort, Shenzhou-10, sent three astronauts to Tiangong-1 in June 2013. The Shenzhou-10 crewmembers spent 14 days in space — the Chinese spaceflight record that Jing and Chen are poised to break.

—

Join our fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, Google+, feedly, flipboard and Instagram.

Check out our Flipboard magazine ESIST  If you enjoy reading our posts. All of our handpicked articles will be delivered to the flipboard magazine every day.

Original article posted on Space.com

By Mike Wall

 

 

 

China just launched two astronauts into space

China has launched two astronauts into space, where they’ll spend 30 days living and performing experiments on board the Tiangong 2 space lab.

The expedition will be the longest stay in space for Chinese astronauts to date, and will help them prepare for future crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, and achieve their goal of having a permanent space station in orbit by 2022.

The two astronauts, 49-year-old Jing Haipeng (who has already been to space twice) and 37-year-old Chen Dong, launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert at 23:30 GMT.

They’ll ride up and back in the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft, which was lifted by a Long March-2F rocket, and within two days will dock with Tiangong 2.

This was China’s sixth manned space launch, but to date the country’s astronauts have only spent 15 days into space, so this will double the length of a crewed mission.

While on board, the astronauts will carry out a range of experiments, such as growing plants in space and using ultrasound equipment to test the effects of space on their own bodies.

They’ll also be testing computers, as well as propulsion and life support systems on board Tiangong 2.

Tiangong is Chinese for “heavenly palace”, and it was launched last month to become the second of China’s space labs in orbit.

The first space lab, Tiangong 1, was launched in 2011 and docked with three rockets, but a few weeks ago China admitted that it had lost control of the spacecraft, and it was on a collision course with Earth in 2017.

It’s hoped that this second space lab will have more luck, and extra modules will be added over the new few years with the goal of being a fully operational space station by 2022.

China is only the third country, after Russia and the US, to launch its own crewed missions. But it was excluded from the International Space Station due to concerns over its military ambitions – which is why it’s now aiming to create its own that it hopes will operate for at least a decade.

The BBC reports that the launch was declared a success around 15 minutes after lift-off, and Chinese President Xi Jinping put out a congratulatory message in state-owned media saying he hoped the astronauts “vigorously advance the spirit of space travel”.

He added that this mission would “enable China to take larger and further steps in space exploration, and make new contributions to building up China as a space power”.

China has been heavily investing in space over the past few years, and had planned to launch at least 20 space missions in 2016.

It’s already landed a rover on the Moon (RIP Jade Rabbit), and now plans to launch another lunar probe to the far side of the Moon by 2018. By 2020, the country wants to send an unmanned rover to Mars, before it launches a crewed lunar mission in 2025.

Let’s just hope the Chinese Space program gets a little better at communicating with the rest of the international space community before then, with planetary scientist Monica Grady commenting over at The Conversation that it currently “operates almost completely independently of other space agencies”.

We wish Haipeng and Dong the best of luck on this latest crewed mission, and can’t wait to see what they do next. Onwards and upwards.

—

Join our fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, Google+, feedly, flipboard and Instagram.

Check out our Flipboard magazine ESIST  If you enjoy reading our posts. All of our handpicked articles will be delivered to the flipboard magazine every day.

Original article on ScienceAlert

by FIONA MACDONALD

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mars-bound astronauts face chronic dementia risk from galactic cosmic ray exposure | ESIST

Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it?

Credit: © cosmicvue / Fotolia: Elements of this image furnished by NASA

 

Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it? That’s the question concerning University of California, Irvine scientists probing a phenomenon called “space brain.”

UCI’s Charles Limoli and colleagues found that exposure to highly energetic charged particles — much like those found in the galactic cosmic rays that will bombard astronauts during extended spaceflights — causes significant long-term brain damage in test rodents, resulting in cognitive impairments and dementia.

Their study appears in Nature’s Scientific Reports. It follows one last year showing somewhat shorter-term brain effects of galactic cosmic rays. The current findings, Limoli said, raise much greater alarm.

“This is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a two-to-three-year round trip to Mars,” said the professor of radiation oncology in UCI’s School of Medicine. “The space environment poses unique hazards to astronauts. Exposure to these particles can lead to a range of potential central nervous system complications that can occur during and persist long after actual space travel — such as various performance decrements, memory deficits, anxiety, depression and impaired decision-making. Many of these adverse consequences to cognition may continue and progress throughout life.”

For the study, rodents were subjected to charged particle irradiation (fully ionized oxygen and titanium) at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and then sent to Limoli’s UCI lab.

Six months after exposure, the researchers still found significant levels of brain inflammation and damage to neurons. Imaging revealed that the brain’s neural network was impaired through the reduction of dendrites and spines on these neurons, which disrupts the transmission of signals among brain cells. These deficiencies were parallel to poor performance on behavioral tasks designed to test learning and memory.

In addition, the Limoli team discovered that the radiation affected “fear extinction,” an active process in which the brain suppresses prior unpleasant and stressful associations, as when someone who nearly drowned learns to enjoy water again.

“Deficits in fear extinction could make you prone to anxiety,” Limoli said, “which could become problematic over the course of a three-year trip to and from Mars.”

Most notably, he said, these six-month results mirror the six-week post-irradiation findings of a 2015 study he conducted that appeared in the May issue of Science Advances.

Similar types of more severe cognitive dysfunction are common in brain cancer patients who have received high-dose, photon-based radiation treatments. In other research, Limoli examines the impact of chemotherapy and cranial irradiation on cognition.

While dementia-like deficits in astronauts would take months to manifest, he said, the time required for a mission to Mars is sufficient for such impairments to develop. People working for extended periods on the International Space Station, however, do not face the same level of bombardment with galactic cosmic rays because they are still within the Earth’s protective magnetosphere.

Limoli’s work is part of NASA’s Human Research Program. Investigating how space radiation affects astronauts and learning ways to mitigate those effects are critical to further human exploration of space, and NASA needs to consider these risks as it plans for missions to Mars and beyond.

Partial solutions are being explored, Limoli noted. Spacecraft could be designed to include areas of increased shielding, such as those used for rest and sleep. However, these highly energetic charged particles will traverse the ship nonetheless, he added, “and there is really no escaping them.”

Preventive treatments offer some hope. Limoli’s group is working on pharmacological strategies involving compounds that scavenge free radicals and protect neurotransmission.

Vipan Kumar Parihar, Barrett Allen, Chongshan Caressi, Katherine Tran, Esther Chu, Stephanie Kwok, Nicole Chmielewski, Janet Baulch, Erich Giedzinski and Munjal Acharya of UCI and Richard Britten of Eastern Virginia Medical School contributed to the study, which NASA supported through grants NNX13AK70G, NNX14AE73G, NNX13AD59G, NNX10AD59G, UARC NAS2-03144 and NNX15AI22G.

---

Story Source:  Materials provided by  University of California, Irvine. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Original article on ScienceDaily

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dizzying View Inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building | ESIST

By Samantha Cole

 

A unique view of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

You’re looking up through the birthplace of the only spacecraft that have landed human feet on another world.

NASA published this photo of the interior of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, showing off four new work platforms recently installed on the north and south sides of High Bay 3. The platforms will provide access to the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for Exploration Mission 1. NASA’s in the process of sprucing up the VAB in preparation for Mars missions.

Flickr user Bruno Sanchez-Andrade Nuño

VAB

Built in 1966, the VAB is the tallest single-story building in the world. It sprawls over eight acres of land, and stands 525 feet tall.

 

Source: The Dizzying View Inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building | Popular Science