Zac Hall

This is the video of NASA’s Steve Jurcyk speaking at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory last week where he shared the 2021 launch target for Artemis I. I’ve transcribed and timestamped the relevant clip.

I do wonder what all processes are required between early fall 2020 to late 2021. The pieces for Space Launch System will be at Kennedy Space Center for almost a year before launching.

When will Space Launch System fly? There’s more NASA talk of 2021. Marcia Smith reports for SpacePolicyOnline:

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is truly taking flight in 2020.

The major milestone on the horizon is the historic return of human spaceflight capabilities for the United States for the first time since the Space Shuttle Program ended almost a decade ago. We’ve been hitching a ride on Russian rockets since 2011.

SpaceX and Boeing are tasked with taking astronauts to space from American soil, and SpaceX appears best positioned to win the race.

The real prize, ultimately, is multiple American companies capable of human spaceflight.

A Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be launched in space on a Falcon 9 rocket later this year. SpaceX demonstrated its prerequisite launch one year ago today:

A $2 million prize is at stake today for the DARPA Launch Challenge attempt from Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska on Kodiak Island.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, designed the challenge to help discover companies demonstrating “new and groundbreaking capabilities to address emerging Department of Defense needs.” California-based Astra is tasked with today’s launch which, if successfull, will be the first of three cash prize-winning launches.

NASA and Dictionary.com driving the campaign to recruit future astronauts:

Calling all astrophiles! Today, March 2, NASA begins accepting applications for their next class of astronauts. Do you have what it takes to become a “star sailor”? Watch this video to find out! 

Travel on, star sailor:

NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio is opening its doors to the public for a series of free tours of world-class research facilities this year. The tours are designed in part to celebrate 20 years of continuous human presence in space with the International Space Station.

Stephen Clark at the excellent Spaceflight Now site has the extensive story behind these new SpaceX artist renderings.

The major milestone of assembly was reached in California last August. Today we get a time-lapse video of that process from Northrop Grumman’s clean room.

You’re familiar with the Moon right? That really charming glow in the sky that controls our tides? Turns out Earth has a new one, and it’s not the first time this has happened either.

Astronomer Kacper Wierzchos shared the news this week that he and his Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne discovered something special in the night sky.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is one name among many space industry heavy hitters that will be present at the inaugural ASCEND space economy event in Las Vegas, Nevada, later this year.

MEV is the Mission Extension Vehicle used by SpaceLogistics, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary, to service satellites in space.

The life extension satellite made history yesterday when it successfully docked to another commercial satellite:

NASA’s Balloon Program Office believes its super pressure balloons can be used for scientific research that would otherwise require launching a rocket into space.

The next NASA super pressure balloon launch should happen around mid-April with the primary goal of “validating and certifying the super pressure balloon as an operational flight vehicle,” according to the program’s chief Debbie Fairbrother.

That’s the question some are asking of the newest (and smallest) branch of the U.S. military. Lieutenant General David D. Thompson, the second in command at Space Force, already has three answers ready to go in this well-rounded interview with Leigh Giangreco:

Two pieces of breaking news from Virgin Galactic.

First, Virgin Galactic says 7,957 registrations of interest in flight reservations have been made as of February 23, 2020. That’s up 124% from 3,557 as of September 30, 2019.

Second, a new “One Small Step” program will allow prospective flyers to pay a $1,000 refundable deposit to jump ahead of the queue when spaceflight sales resume. The “One Giant Leap” process will come later to confirm a “spaceflight reservation and gain full membership to the thriving Virgin Galactic Future Astronaut Community” after full payments are made.

Originally set for 1:45 a.m. on March 2, SpaceX is now looking at 11:50 pm on March 6 to launch its 20th commercial resupply service mission to the International Space Station.

A misbehaving valve motor on the second stage engine is at fault for rescheduling SpaceX CRS-20:

McGee was recently promoted to brigadier general by President Trump and participated in the Super Bowl coin flip alongside three other 100-year-old World War II veterans.

Mighty powerful recruitment video:

From the space history time capsule, Soviets secretly selected their first cosmonauts 60 years ago.

The Soviet Union fielded 154 candidates from the Soviet Air Force, narrowing down the pool to 29 candidates after medical tests at the Central Military Scientific Aviation Hospital in Moscow, and selecting the top 20 candidates as cosmonauts.

Ultimately, 12 cosmonauts went on to complete space flights. Cosmonaut Boris Valentinovich Volynov, now 85, is the only surviving member of the group as of February 2020.

NASA highlights the contrast between the very public American routine versus the Soviet process:

From NASA Goddard:

This video uses data gathered from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft to recreate some of the stunning views of the Moon that the Apollo 13 astronauts saw on their perilous journey around the farside in 1970.

These visualizations, in 4K resolution, depict many different views of the lunar surface, starting with earthset and sunrise and concluding with the time Apollo 13 reestablished radio contact with Mission Control.

Also depicted is the path of the free return trajectory around the Moon, and a continuous view of the Moon throughout that path. All views have been sped up for timing purposes — they are not shown in “real-time.”

NASA’s InSight Mars lander touched down one year ago after a six month journey from Earth to the Red Planet. Today six papers were published with a year of science learned through year one of the lander mission.

A new understanding of Mars is beginning to emerge, thanks to the first year of NASA’s InSight lander mission. Findings described in a set of six papers published today reveal a planet alive with quakes, dust devils and strange magnetic pulses.

Five of the papers were published in Nature. An additional paper in Nature Geoscience details the InSight spacecraft’s landing site, a shallow crater nicknamed “Homestead hollow” in a region called Elysium Planitia.

InSight is equipped to detect Mars quakes, wind speed, air pressure, and more.

Julius Montgomery is another name history will remember for an extraordinary life lived. Katharine Q. Seelye recently profiled his accomplishments in The New York Times following his passing:

In 1956, he had become the first African-American who was not a janitor to be hired to work at the Cape Canaveral space facility in Florida. He was part of a team of technical professionals, known as “range rats,” who repaired the electronics in malfunctioning ballistic missiles and satellite equipment.

Two years later, his team wanted to start a school to keep the space workers up-to-date. Brevard Engineering College, as it was to be called (Cape Canaveral is in Brevard County), planned to lease classrooms at a public junior high school near the space center.

America’s ugly history with racism got in Montgomery’s way, however, when he applied to attend the college. He selflessly stepped aside so the college could open.

India is one step closer to “the dream of sending an Indian on a Made-in-India spacecraft to space,” according to India Times.

Indian Space Research Organisation director Kailasavadivoo Sivan recently marked the country’s latest milestone: