Who wants to be an astronaut? If the answer is you, there's a reality TV show, appropriately titled "Who Wants to Be an Astronaut?", that you ought to apply for. From a report: The Discovery Channel is seeking to cast about 10 would-be astronauts to compete during the series' eight-episode run next year for a seat on a real-life trip to the International Space Station, followed by live coverage of the launch of the winner on a SpaceX rocket. "We'd like a diverse group of people that each have their own story, why they want to go to space, why they're worthy of going to space, what their back story is," said Jay Peterson, president of Boat Rocker Studios, Unscripted, one of the companies producing the show for Discovery. That person will not be the only amateur astronaut destined for the space station next year. So many tourism and entertainment efforts are preparing trips there that it could begin to look more like a soundstage for television shows and a hotel for the wealthy than an orbiting research laboratory.

Many who work in the business of space believe that is a good thing, even if trips to orbit will remain out of reach of all but the wealthiest passengers in the near term. "This is a real inflection point, I think, with human spaceflight," Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development, said during a news conference this month announcing that the agency had signed an agreement with Axiom Space, a Houston-based company, to fly the first mission of private astronauts to the space station. "I'm very bullish on the tourism market and the tourism activity," Mr. McAlister said. "I think more people that are going to fly, they're going to want to do more things in space." Although the International Space Station may stay up in orbit at least until 2028, in the future it will not be only space station. Russian space authorities last month declared their intention to leave the I.S.S. in the coming years and build a station of their own. A Chinese orbital outpost is expected to come online in the next year or two.

NASA and Houston-based Axiom Space have signed a "mission order" setting the stage for four civilians to visit the International Space Station early next year, the first fully commercial flight to the orbiting lab complex, agency managers said Monday. CBS News reports: Axiom's "AX-1" mission and an upcoming charity-driven flight to low-Earth orbit, both aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules, represent "a renaissance in U.S. human spaceflight," said Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development. "I think that's the perfect word for what we're experiencing," he said of the growing commercial space market, which includes the anticipated certification of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and upcoming sub-orbital flights by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. "This is a real inflection point, I think, with human spaceflight."

Axiom Space, led by Mike Suffredini, NASA's former space station program manager, announced last year that it plans to launch a four-man crew to the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The launch is currently targeted for a January timeframe. Axiom Vice President Mike Lopez-Alegria, a former NASA astronaut and space station commander, will serve as commander of the AX-1 mission, which is expected to last about 10 days. Joining him will be Larry Connor, an American entrepreneur, Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy and Israeli investor Eytan Stibbe, a former fighter pilot.

Lopez-Alegria on Monday told reporters that the crew will participate in centrifuge training and flights to simulate weightlessness starting next week, followed by a camping trip to Alaska in July for "bonding and leadership training." Lopez-Alegria and Connor, the mission pilot, will begin SpaceX flight training shortly thereafter before the entire crew begins space station familiarization at the Johnson Space Center in October. [...] Axiom is not paying list price for the AX-1 mission, in part because planning began before the new price guidelines were determined and because the company will be providing services to NASA that the agency would otherwise have to pay for. The mission order announced Monday covers just $1.69 million. Additional agreements remain to be negotiated.

Four astronauts in a SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully splashed down into the Gulf of Mexico this morning at 2:57 a.m. ET — returning from the International Space Station in the first U.S. crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot in 1968.

Phys.org reports: It was an express trip home, lasting just 6 1/2 hours... "We welcome you back to planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX," SpaceX's Mission Control radioed moments after splashdown. "For those of you enrolled in our frequent flyer program, you've earned 68 million miles on this voyage...."

The 167-day mission was the longest for a crew capsule launching from the U.S. The previous record of 84 days was set by NASA's final Skylab station astronauts in 1974. Saturday night's undocking left seven people at the space station, four of whom arrived a week ago via SpaceX...

Once finished with their medical checks on the ship, the astronauts planned to hop on a helicopter for the short flight to shore, then catch a plane straight to Houston for a reunion with their families. "It's not very often you get to wake up on the space station and go to sleep in Houston," chief flight director Holly Ridings told reporters.

The astronauts' capsule, Resilience, will head back to Cape Canaveral for refurbishment for SpaceX's first private crew mission in September... A tech billionaire has purchased the entire three-day flight, which will orbit 75 miles (120 kilometers) above the space station. He'll fly with a pair of contest winners and a physician assistant from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, his designated charity for the mission.

SpaceX's next astronaut launch for NASA will follow in October.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from Phys.Org: China plans to launch the core module for its first permanent space station this week in the latest big step forward for the country's space exploration program. The Tianhe, or 'Heavenly Harmony' module is set to be hurtled into space aboard a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan. The launch could come as early as Thursday night if all goes as planned. It would be the first of 11 missions to build and supply the space station for a three-person crew. Another 10 launches will send up two more modules; four cargo supply shipments and four missions with crews. At least 12 astronauts are training to fly to and live in the station, including veterans of previous flights, newcomers and women.

When completed by late 2022, Tianhe is expected to weigh about 66 tons, a fraction the size of the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and will weigh about 450 tons when completed. Tianhe will have a docking port and will also be able to connect with a powerful Chinese space satellite. Theoretically, it could be expanded with more modules.

NASA has tweeted a video showing the arrival of four astronauts from three countries on the International Space Station early Satuday morning.

CNN describes the significance to their arrival — and what the astronauts will do during their six-month stay in space: This mission, dubbed Crew-2, marks the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company and the first to make use of a previously flown, privately-owned rocket booster and spacecraft... On Saturday morning, the capsule slowly aligned itself and moved in to dock directly with one of the space station's ports.

The crew consists of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide with Japan's JAXA space agency.

A prime focus of the astronauts' mission will be research with "tissue chips," or "small models of human organs containing multiple cell types that behave much the same as they do in the body" and that NASA hopes will advance the development of drugs and vaccines, according to the space agency. That work will build on years of studying biological and other scientific phenomena aboard the ISS, where the microgravity environment can give scientists a better fundamental understanding of how something works.

Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet, and Hoshide joined seven astronauts already on board the station, four of whom arrived on a different SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in November. That brings the space station's current total of personnel to 11 — one of the largest crews the ISS has ever hosted. But that number will quickly drop back down to seven when four of the astronauts who'd been on board hitch a ride home from the station on April 28.

SpaceX has another successful human space launch to its credit, after a good takeoff and orbital delivery of its Crew Dragon spacecraft on Friday morning. From a report: The Dragon took off aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 5:49 AM EDT (2:49 AM EDT). On board were four astronauts, including NASA's Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, as well as JAXA's Akihiko Hoshide and the ESA's Thomas Pesquet. This was Spacex's second official astronaut delivery mission for NASA, after its Crew-1 operation last year.

SpaceX has characterized the use of re-flown elements as arguably even safer than using new ones, with CEO Elon Musk noting that you wouldn't want to be on the "first flight of an airplane when it comes out of the factory" during a conversation with Xprize's Peter Diamandis on Thursday evening. Now that the Crew Dragon is in its target transfer orbit, it'll be making its way to rendezvous with the Space Station, which will take just under 24 hours. It'll be docking with the station early tomorrow morning, attaching to a docking port that was just cleared earlier this month when SpaceX's other Crew Dragon relocated to another port on the ISS earlier this month.

As the 20-year-old International Space Station (ISS) starts showing its age, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov suggested Russia would back away from the ISS as early as 2025 to pursue a national space station. Science Magazine reports: Although he and other officials have since backpedaled from such a concrete date for withdrawal, Russian skepticism over the future of the ISS could complicate U.S. efforts to keep it operating until the end of the decade. "ISS partners would have a really hard time keeping the station functional without Russia," says Vitaly Egorov, an industry observer, writer, and former spokesperson for Dauria Aerospace, a Russian company.

On 18 April, Russia 1, a state TV channel, reported that Borisov told a meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, "We need to honestly inform our partners about leaving the ISS in 2025." In a statement to newswires released later that day, Borisov's office clarified his remarks and backtracked from the date. "A technical inspection is needed, and then we can make a decision and inform our partners," the statement said. But it reiterated that the ISS has run well past its original life span, and its condition "leaves much to be desired."

Seemingly downplaying Borisov's remarks this week, Dmitry Rogozin, who leads Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said on Monday that Russia would not pull out of the ISS until the proposed new station becomes functional. "Pauses are deadly for human spaceflight," he wrote in a Facebook post. Rogozin later added that the new station, which does not have a name yet, could be based on one of the modules initially planned for the ISS.

If your heart stops en route to Mars, rest assured that researchers have considered how to carry out CPR in space. (One option is to plant your feet on the ceiling and extend your arms downwards to compress the patient's chest.) From a report: Astronauts, because of their age range and high physical fitness, are unlikely to suffer a stroke or have their appendix suddenly explode. That's good because, if it does happen, they're in the realm of what Jonathan Scott -- head of the medical projects and technology team at the European Space Agency -- describes as 'treatment futility.' In other words: there's nothing anyone can do about it. On the ISS, when medical incidents arise, astronauts can draw on the combined expertise of a host of medical experts at Nasa. "The patient is on the space station, the doctor is on the ground, and if there's a problem the patient consults the doctor," says Scott. By the time astronauts reach Mars, there'll be a 40-minute time lag in communications, if it's possible to make contact at all. "We have to begin preparing for not only being able to diagnose things in spaceflight but also to treat them as well," Scott says.

Artificial intelligence is likely to be a part of the solution. If you're imagining the holographic doctor from Star Trek, downgrade your expectations, at least for the next few decades. Kris Lehnhardt, the element scientist for exploration medical capability at Nasa, says: "We are many, many, many years away from: please state the nature of the medical emergency." Emmanuel Urquieta is deputy chief scientist at the Translational Institute for Space Health (TRISH), a Nasa-funded program which conducts research into healthcare for deep space missions. While full AI may be a way off, Urquieta believes some form of artificial intelligence will still play a crucial role. "It's going to be essential for a mission to Mars," he says. While the crew for a mission to Mars will likely include a medical doctor, he explains: "No single physician can know everything." And, of course: "What happens if that astronaut gets sick?" Research projects funded by TRISH include Butterfly iQ, a handheld ultrasound device for use by non-medical personnel to make diagnoses that would otherwise require bulky equipment and a trained operator. VisualDx is an AI diagnostics tool originally developed to analyse images and identify skin conditions. The technology is now being adapted to help astronauts diagnose a wide range of conditions most commonly encountered in space, without an internet connection.

New submitter catmar68 writes: CERN proposes "space elevator" accelerator to answer this fundamental question: "Do antimatter apples fall up?" From the press release: The true question, they say, is whether antimatter apples fall down differently. If a difference were spotted, it would spell the end of "CPT invariance" -- a principle that has underpinned every theory of physics since the invention of quantum mechanics. "The Standard Model of particle physics has been very successful, but it can't explain the 95% of the universe which is 'dark', and neither Einstein nor any physicist since has been able to cook up a working theory of quantum gravity," says theorist Flora Oilp. "It's time to challenge its most fundamental principle head-on." The way forward, according to Oilp and her colleagues, is to build a vertical accelerator that will put gravity to the test directly. Every previous particle accelerator has been horizontal. A combination of high speeds and frequent course corrections using focusing magnets has always meant that the effect of gravity can be neglected. But by utilising a range of new, revolutionary techniques, including accelerating particles upwards inside a vacuum vessel, and timing how long they take to fall back down to Earth, physicists can study the elusive fourth force directly. Furthermore, by comparing results with protons and antiprotons, they can watch for signs of "CPT violation." Such behaviour cannot be explained using conventional theories, which rely on this principle to ensure the conservation of probability.

The accelerator would be built in two stages. Stage one proposes a 500 m vertical accelerator, starting from the base of the LHC shafts. An exciting collaboration with NASA may come to fruition by utilising detectors on the International Space Station (ISS) to detect beams of particles fired by the accelerator every time the ISS is overhead. This "reverse cosmic-ray" experiment would allow the measurement of Earth's gravity on particle trajectories at unprecedented levels. Stage one will seek to match the roughly 1% precision on measurements of the gravitational constant "g," which is currently being targeted in parallel by experiments with antihydrogen at the Laboratory's Antimatter Factory. This moderate build will also allow engineers and physicists to understand the intricacies of running a vertical accelerator in preparation for stage two -- the space elevator. "If built, however, this advanced particle accelerator would nevertheless be three times taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which has been the tallest structure in the world since 2009."

PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from Motherboard: In November 2019, twelve bottles of Chateau Petrus 2000 -- a rare and expensive red wine from Bordeaux, France -- hitched a ride to the International Space Station aboard a Northrop Grumman spacecraft. It was followed several months later by 320 snippets of grapevine, or canes, of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. For a year, both viticultural products were exposed to the unique stress of the station's microgravity environment. On January 1st, the wine bottles and canes returned to earth aboard a SpaceX cargo vessel, and were hurried back to the Institute of Vine and Wine Science (ISVV) at the University of Bordeaux. Researchers have already begun analyzing the changes they underwent while in orbit, and during a press conference on Wednesday, revealed their preliminary findings. They had also, of course, tasted the wine.

To the surprise of researchers, all 320 vine snippets survived the stay in space. Some have since been replanted, and the results have been astounding. "They are developing much, much faster than the normal canes -- the ones that are coming back from space," said Dr. Michel Lebert, SCU's Chief Science Officer. The wine, to the delight of the experiment's organizers, also appears to have undergone significant changes. "With the one that had been in space, I would say the differences that I found most were with heightened floral characteristics," said Jane Ansen, a wine writer with a diploma in wine-tasting from ISVV. "I would probably say that the Petrus 2000 that had been on the ISS was maybe one, two, even three years further evolved that you would expect compared to the one that had remained on earth,"; she said.

"When the Earth environment is recreated in space, like on the ISS, the only parameter that changes from Earth is near-zero gravity," said Nicolas Gaume, CEO of Space Cargo Unlimited. "This exposes life on the ISS to immense stress." The researchers hypothesize that this stress, promoted by microgravity, expedited the natural aging process taking place in the wine bottles, and led the canes to develop a resiliency that is contributing to their rapid growth back on earth. If their theory is correct, the implications could be significant for a future in which climate change threatens to disrupt agricultural production. "If the vines find a way to evolve so that they are more naturally resistant to stress on Earth, then that opens very exciting possibilities for all of us," said Gaume.

"A pallet of batteries was released from the International Space Station last week, becoming the heaviest single piece of junk ever jettisoned from the station," reports UPI: Mission controllers in Houston commanded the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release an external pallet loaded with the 2.9 tons of nickel-hydrogen batteries into Earth's orbit Thursday morning. "It is safely moving away from the station and will orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere," NASA said in a statement.
Gizmodo shares a photo of the pallet orbiting 265 miles (427 km) above Chile. And they add that this chain of events starte in 2011 when NASA decided to switch the Space Station from nickel-hydrogen batteries to lithium-ion batteries. This effort required four supply missions from the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) cargo spacecraft, 13 different astronauts, and 14 spacewalks, in which 48 nickel-hydrogen batteries were replaced by 24 lithium-ion batteries...

"It used to be that it wasn't a big deal to toss stuff from ISS because very few satellites were below it [at altitudes below 250 miles (400 km)], " Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained in an email. "That's not so true any more with a bunch of cubesats and with recently launched Starlinks during orbit raising. So I have concerns."

To which he added: "I don't immediately see what else they could have done except fly a whole extra HTV mission just to get rid of it."

According to the European Space Agency, around 34,000 objects larger than 3.9 inches (10 cm) are currently in orbit around Earth, in addition to millions of tinier objects, such as tools and bits of spacecraft. The volume of objects in space, both functional and non-functional, is steadily increasing, prompting concerns of potential collisions and even more orbital debris.
A NASA representative told Gizmodo their ballistics officers "indicate no threat" of the pallet smashing into other space objects, but added "this item, like all, will be tracked by U.S. Space Command."

AmiMoJo shares a report from ScienceAlert: The menagerie of bacterial and fungal species living among us is ever growing -- and this is no exception in low-gravity environments, such as the International Space Station (ISS). Researchers from the United States and India working with NASA have now discovered four strains of bacteria living in different places in the ISS -- three of which were, until now, completely unknown to science.

Three of the four strains were isolated back in 2015 and 2016 -- one was found on an overhead panel of the ISS research stations, the second was found in the Cupola, the third was found on the surface of the dining table; the fourth was found in an old HEPA filter returned to Earth in 2011. All four of the strains belong to a family of bacteria found in soil and freshwater; they are involved in nitrogen fixation, plant growth, and can help stop plant pathogens. Basically, good bacteria to have around if you're growing things. The research has been published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Microsoft will connect its cloud computing Azure Space platform to the Spaceborne Computer-2, a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise product promising to "deliver edge computing and [artificial intelligence] capabilities to the International Space Station (ISS)." Space.com reports: Spaceborne Computer-2 will launch to space Feb. 20 aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo craft that will also deliver tons of other supplies, experiments and food for the station's Expedition 64 astronauts. An Antares rocket will launch the Cygnus NG-15 cargo mission from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. Spaceborne Computer-2's mission could last two or three years. Once the computer is up and running in orbit, researchers will be able to use the Azure cloud system to do intensive processing or to transmit results back to the device. The computer is based on HPE's Edgeline Converged Edge system designed to operate in harsh environments.

Growing plants in space, modeling dust storms on Earth to assist with Mars mission planning, and doing ultrasound medical imaging for astronaut health care are some of the many fields that the collaboration will address, the companies said in a press release. "The combined advancements of Spaceborne Computer-2 will enable astronauts to eliminate longer latency and wait times associated with sending data to-and-from Earth, to tackle research, and gain insights immediately for a range of projects," the release added.

The new project builds on the lessons learned from a predecessor proof-of-concept device, called Spaceborne Computer. This flew to the space station for a one-year mission in 2017 to investigate computer reliability in space, amid a harsh environment that includes high radiation and zero gravity. "The goal was to test if affordable, commercial off-the-shelf servers used on earth, but equipped with purposefully-designed software-based hardening features, can withstand the shake, rattle and roll of a rocket launch to space, and once there, seamlessly operate on the ISS," the press release said, adding the predecessor mission was a success. "Additionally, gaining more reliable computing on the ISS is just the first step in NASA's goals for supporting human space travel to the moon, Mars and beyond where reliable communications is a mission critical need," the release noted.

Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover floated back outside the International Space Station Monday and completed solar array battery replacement work that began four years ago. They also installed three new video cameras and made preparations for upcoming work to install new roll-out solar blankets to upgrade the lab's power system. From a report: The work took less time than expected and the astronauts were able to carry out a variety of lower-priority "get-ahead" tasks before returning to Quest airlock and calling it a day, closing out a five-hour 20-minute spacewalk. Taking one last look around before entering the airlock, Hopkins said simply, "Beautiful view." The excursion began at 7:56 a.m. EST when the two men switched their spacesuits to battery power, officially kicking off the 234th spacewalk, or EVA, devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began 23 years ago in 1998.

"OK, it's a beautiful day. Let's go for a walk outside," astronaut Bob Hines radioed from mission control in Houston. The first priority was electrically connecting a replacement battery in the station's solar power system. The batteries are critical to station operation. They are recharged by the arrays when the lab is in sunlight and then provide that stored power during periods of orbital darkness. Starting in 2017, spacewalking astronauts began work to replace all 48 of the station's original nickel-hydrogen batteries with 24 smaller, more powerful lithium ion units. During battery replacement work in March 2019, one of the new lithium ion power packs used by the station's left-side inboard set of arrays failed and was replaced with one of the older nickel hydrogen batteries that had been removed. All of the other older batteries were replaced as planned during multiple spacewalks. Over the weekend, flight controllers operating the station's robot arm by remote control disconnected the one remaining nickel hydrogen battery and robotically installed a fresh lithium ion unit. Hopkins and Glover electrically connected the battery, finally completing the power system upgrade four years after the work began.

An American real estate investor, a Canadian investor, and a former Israeli Air Force pilot are paying $55 million each to be part of the first fully private astronaut crew to journey to the International Space Station. The Verge reports: The trio will hitch a ride on SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule early next year, with a veteran NASA astronaut as the commander. The Ax-1 mission, arranged by Houston, Texas-based space tourism company Axiom Space, is a watershed moment for the space industry as companies race to make space travel more accessible to private customers instead of governments. Private citizens have trekked to the space station in the past, but the Ax-1 mission marks the first to use a commercially built astronaut capsule: SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which flew its first two crews to the ISS last year.

Larry Connor, an entrepreneur and nonprofit activist investor; Mark Pathy, the Canadian investor and philanthropist; and Eytan Stibbe, the former Israeli fighter pilot and an impact investor, were revealed by Axiom on Tuesday morning as the company's inaugural crew. Connor, 71, is president of The Connor Group, a luxury real estate investment firm based in Ohio. He'd become the second-oldest person to fly to space after John Glenn, who flew the US space shuttle Discovery at 77 years old.

The crew's flight to the space station, an orbital laboratory some 250 miles above Earth, will take two days. They'll then spend about eight days aboard the station's US segment, where they'll take part "in research and philanthropic projects," Axiom said in a statement. Living alongside working astronauts from the US, Russia, and likely Germany, the private crew members will roll out sleeping bags somewhere on the station. [...] The Ax-1 mission will have to be approved by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel, the space station's managing body of partner countries that includes the US, Russia, Canada, Japan, and others. That approval process kicked off today...

Boeing's test of the largest rocket in U.S. history ended earlier than expected on Jan. 16 because a hydraulic-system setting exceeded a preset limit, dealing another setback to the company's space ambitions. From a report: The first firing of all four RS-25 engines on the Space Launch System rocket ended just 67.2 seconds into the planned eight-minute test. The so-called hot fire exercise at the NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was designed to simulate a full flight from Earth. Engineers from NASA, Boeing and the engines' maker, Aerojet-Rocketdyne Holdings, will assess data and determine whether a second test is needed or if the rocket is ready to ship to Florida's Kennedy Space Center to prepare for its maiden flight. The SLS can be loaded with its super-chilled propellants -- liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen -- only nine times, which will be a consideration in whether to stage a second test at Stennis, NASA said Tuesday.

The shutdown "was triggered by test parameters that were intentionally conservative to ensure the safety of the core stage during the test," NASA said in a blog post Tuesday. Preliminary inspections and data reviews "show the rocket's hardware is in excellent condition," the agency said. The test was cut short just as the engines began to pivot and test their thrust capability while rotating on gimbals. The premature end, before engineers collected a full array of data, represented another hurdle for Boeing's space program. The SLS rocket has been plagued by years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns. The program has broad support in Congress because of the federal contracts and jobs it offers across many states. Boeing also is attempting to correct glitches with its Starliner spacecraft, which would ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station under a NASA contract. Boeing said Monday it had completed qualification of Starliner's flight software following an extensive review. A second test of the vehicle to the ISS is slated for March, following a botched flight in December 2019. A crewed flight is expected later this year.

"Axiom Space has announced that it is creating an office park and manufacturing center at the Houston SpacePort at Ellington Field," notes an opinion piece for The Hill by Houston-based space writer Mark R. Whittington.

"The development is a hopeful sign that, despite foot dragging by Congress, a commercial replacement for the International Space Station may well happen." The United States has a chance to avoid a "space gap" when the ISS reaches the end of its operational life, like the one that happened between the end of the space shuttle program and the first launch of the SpaceX commercial crew Dragon mission. When Jim Bridenstine became NASA administrator, one of the questions confronting him was what to do about maintaining a presence in low Earth orbit after the ISS. The idea that he and experts at NASA have been pushing is to encourage private companies to build their own space station.

NASA would provide needed support by pledging to become an anchor tenant for such orbiting facilities. However, the commercial space stations would also have to find private customers. The problem is that Congress has been remarkably stingy when it comes to putting up real money for this approach. The fiscal 2020 budget request included $150 million for commercial space stations. Congress funded support for private orbiting labs for a grand total of $15 million...

Axiom Space has won the nod to attach one of its own modules to the ISS. Not waiting for Congress to cough up funding for NASA, Axiom has announced a facility to manufacture space station modules at the Ellington SpacePort in Houston. The company will also have private astronaut training facilities. Besides employing 1,000 people, the new Axiom facility represents a commitment to creating a commercial space station industry... It is also likely no accident that the Axiom facility is about a five-hour drive from the growing SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica near the southern tip of Texas. No doubt SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would be pleased to launch finished modules to space, using the mighty Starship rocket, and later crews and cargo.

In the midst of a pandemic, part of a space future is taking shape in South Texas. This time it's being driven by the private sector. NASA had best jump on board or risk being left behind.

Since 1955 the U.S./Canadian operation that monitors North American airspace with radars and satellite to maintain air sovereignty has also, at Christmas time, been tracking Santa.

And this year their trackers received additional support from the U.S. Space Command, a joint-military command drawing its units from five military service branches (including the U.S. Space Force). That command "launched a new reindeer tracker to pinpoint the exact location of Santa's sleigh at any given time during the night," according to NPR's Morning Edition, with General James Dickinson telling them the equipment's official name: Rudolph Infrared Tracking System. "We made some upgrades this year."

And that was just the beginning, reports The Hill: Santa knows astronauts need presents, too, and made his first known visit to the International Space Station to deliver them this year.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which tracks Santa's Christmas Eve journey every year, depicted in a tweet Santa arriving at the International Space Station on Christmas Eve...

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared Santa for the flight to space on Wednesday, providing him "for the first time ever" with a special commercial space license.
The astronauts aboard the ISS recorded a special Christmas video this year. (And a new article in Business Insider expores how astronauts on the space station have celebrated Christmas over the years.)

And NORAD is even maintaining a special web site at NORADSanta.org which not only let visitors track Santa, but through December 31st will also offer an arcade with Christmas-themed videogames, a selection of music by the U.S. Air Force Academy Band, and even a gift shop where you can buy "Santa and NORAD gear," including NORAD hoodies and tote bags.

Though a pop-up window warns visitors that "Clicking through to this next website does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the United States Department of Defense or NORAD of any product or service."

During the Great Conjunction event in which Jupiter and Saturn appeared closer to each other in the sky than they have for hundreds of years, photographer Jason De Freitas captured a photo showing the ISS zipping between the two planets. PetaPixel reports: While planning to photograph the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, De Freitas realized that he could also include the ISS in the frame. "I had the incredible luck of figuring out I could see the path of the International Space Station traveling through the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction," De Freitas says. After a great deal of planning, on December 17th, De Freitas drove an hour -- "quite a short distance in the scheme of things," he says -- to a location where everything would be aligned perfectly for his shot.

At around 9:54pm from Jellore Lookout in New South Wales, Australia, De Freitas pointed his Pentax 67 and Takumar 600mm f/4 at the planets and captured a 10-second exposure on Fujifilm Provia 100f film. The tracking was done with a Skywatcher NEQ6 equatorial mount. The photo above is what resulted. Here's a closer crop in which you can more clearly see the planets and Jupiter's moons. De Freitas also used a Nikon D750 and Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 to capture digital video of the event. "Probably the most unique shot I've ever taken," De Freitas says. "[S]omehow everything on the night worked out. Beyond thrilled with this one.

Four astronauts aboard their SpaceX Dragon capsule "Resilience" have arrived at the International Space Station, circling 262 miles above the Earth, where they will stay until spring. From a report: The capsule lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center Sunday evening atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, chasing the ISS for 27 hours before matching its altitude and speed for an orbital dock. The flight marks only the second crewed flight for Crew Dragon, which became the first commercial vehicle to put humans in orbit when astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken launched in May. "SpaceX, this is Resilience. Excellent job, right down the center," commander Hopkins radioed to mission control after the docking. "SpaceX and NASA, congratulations." The flight marks another milestone for SpaceX flying its first fully operational mission. After the May launch, designated "Demo-2" with Hurley and Behnken, NASA certified the capsule for operational use in its Commercial Crew program. The Resilience crew includes three NASA astronauts and one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who were mostly passengers during the flight of Crew Dragon, which generally flies without human input and docks to the ISS autonomously.