NASA’s Crew Flight Test astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have been aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, docked at the ISS since June 6.
Category: space travel – Page 55
Engineers send 3D Printer into Space
Imagine a crew of astronauts headed to Mars. About 140 million miles away from Earth, they discover their spacecraft has a cracked O-ring. But instead of relying on a dwindling cache of spare parts, what if they could simply fabricate any part they needed on demand?
A team of Berkeley researchers, led by Ph.D. student Taylor Waddell, may have taken a giant leap toward making this option a reality. On June 8, they sent their 3D printing technology to space for the first time as part of the Virgin Galactic 7 mission.
Their next-generation microgravity printer—dubbed SpaceCAL—spent 140 seconds in suborbital space while aboard the VSS Unity space plane. In that short time span, it autonomously printed and post-processed a total of four test parts, including space shuttles and benchy figurines from a liquid plastic called PEGDA.
Nuclear rockets rise again to revolutionize space exploration
Since the 1950s, nuclear rockets have been seen as a game-changer for space travel. Now, with the combined efforts of the NASA, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Lockheed Martin, mankind is close to launching the first nuclear spacecraft into orbit for testing, reports Interesting Engineering (IE).
One Gaganyaan astronaut to travel to ISS in joint mission with NASA, says govt
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US last year, President Joe Biden announced that India and the US were collaborating to send an Indian astronaut to the ISS in 2024.
India’s Astronaut Selection Board had selected four astronauts from the group of test pilots from the Indian Air Force for the Gaganyaan mission, India’s first human space flight planned to take place next year.
“All four astronauts have undergone training on a spaceflight basic module in Russia. Currently, astronauts are undergoing training at ISRO’s Astronauts Training Facility (ATF) in Bengaluru for the Gaganyaan Mission,” Singh said.
SpaceX moving Crew Dragon splashdowns to West Coast after multiple space debris incidents
The next space station astronaut crew may be the last to splash down in the ocean nearby the U.S. east coast.
The Crew Dragon Crew-9 mission with astronauts is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station no earlier than Aug. 18, perhaps becoming the final NASA-led ISS mission to arrive in the Atlantic Ocean aboard Crew Dragon.
Ed Dwight: A space pioneer who finally became an astronaut
Ed Dwight could have been the only black astronaut in the 1960s – but politics got in the way. In 2024, at the age of 90, he finally got his chance to go into orbit.
Humanity has entered a new age of space tourism. For a minimum of $450,000 (£360,000), people with deep pockets can claim the title “astronaut” after a short sub-orbital flight to the edge of space and back and up to 10 minutes experiencing weightlessness above the Earth.
On these near-spaceflights, currently offered by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, there is usually one member of the crew whose name and story captures the headlines – and often a free ride.