Archive for the ‘Astronaut’ Category

Space Object Plays Chicken with the ISS – Astronauts Forced to Hunker Down in Capsule

Saturday, July 18th, 2015

Early this morning the ISS and a piece of debris from an old Russian weather satellite almost gave one another a bro-like chest bump.

Astronauts had an hour and a half to secure as many of the ISS’s individual modules and get themselves hunkered down into their escape pod (the Soyuz capsule attached to the ISS) and nervously wait to see how it would play out.

While that’s the official word there are a lot of humans on the ground declaring that that’s what NASA wants you to believe and that the “space object” was actually a UFO doing a drive-by of the ISS.

Thankfully the debris or whatever it was went by without incident. NASA gave the astronauts the all-clear a few minutes later.

While safe it’s still a terrifying scenario because orbit is pretty is pretty predictable once things are in it…

But there’s that old saying…

What goes around comes around.

Let’s just hope that’s all it is…an old saying…

Or just a UFO flying by.

[WIRED]

Posted in Astronaut, International Space Station, ISS, Russia, Satellite, Science, Space, Space Objects, Space Station, Stars, UFO | Comments Off on Space Object Plays Chicken with the ISS – Astronauts Forced to Hunker Down in Capsule

U.S. Leads Applicants in One-Way Ticket To Mars!

Monday, September 9th, 2013


The totals are in for all the people who are ready to get off this rock and get to colonizing Mars.

Mars-One, the program that’s planning on getting people to Mars to begin the colonization process in the very near future, have tallied the applications for the first round of potential astronauts/colonists.

Leading the pack in applicants? The United States with 47,654 applications. That’s either a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit of the country or a big gauge that people are just overworked and ready for a change of pace even if it means jettisoning themselves into space with no return ticket.

Mars-One will gradually whittle the applicants down to a very small few over the course of the next several years ultimately arriving at a small group of brave, or possibly crazy, individuals who will be shot out to Mars to put down humankind’s first ‘burbs on another world in 2023.

Here’s where the world stood on the applicant roster:

Top 21 countries registered:

United States of America 47,654
India 20,747
China 13,176
Brazil 10,289
Great Britain 8497
Canada 8241
Russia 8197
Mexico 7464
Philippines 4365
Spain 3722
Colombia 3476
Argentina 3474
Australia 2926
France 2538
Turkey 2510
Chile 2475
Ukraine 2340
Peru 2293
Germany 2225
Italy 2070
Poland 1942

[SpaceIndustryNews]

Posted in Astronaut, Mars, Space | Comments Off on U.S. Leads Applicants in One-Way Ticket To Mars!

NASA Developing Printed Food for Astronauts!

Wednesday, June 12th, 2013

3D printng is the ‘it’ thing right now. It seems like nothing can’t be printed. We can print plastic toys, metal parts and even cell tissues using additive manufacturing. So what’s next?

Food…3D-printed food.

A Texas company is partnering with NASA to explore the idea of printing food during long, deep space missions. Systems and Materials Research and
Consultancy, a company in Austin, was recently awarded a Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 contract concerning printing
food for astronauts. Currently astronauts eat foods that lose their micronutrients during the process they go through to become official space-food.

Eventually the prepackaged, off-the-shelf, single-servings the astronauts nom on now will make way for customizable recipes.

Anyone else excited to witness the first live-stream of a 3D-printed Thanksgiving dinner…in space? Us too.
[DesignBoom]

Posted in 3D Printing, Astronaut, Experiment, Food, NASA, Science, Space | Comments Off on NASA Developing Printed Food for Astronauts!