Dominique Luchart's Blog, page 644

China launches experimental satellite into polar orbit, ,

China’s latest space launch sent a third Shiyan 6 experimental satellite into orbit while sporting a new, ultra-black coating to help improve performance of optical sensors.

The Shiyan 6 (03) satellite launched on April 7 atop a Long March 4B rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China at 7:01 p.m. EDT (2301 GMT, or 7:01 a.m. April 8 local time).

Video footage shows insulation tiles falling from the Long March rocket as it lifts off from the pad.

Related: The latest news about China’s space program

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Shiyan 6 (03) lifts off atop of a Long March 4B rocket from Taiyuan on April 8, 2021. (Image credit: CASC)

As with previous Shiyan 6 satellites, China did not release any images of the spacecraft. This is standard practice for countries launching satellites for classified, national defense-related missions.

Chinese media state only that the satellite will be used to carry out “space environment survey and experiments on related technologies.” Shiyan means literally “experiment” in Chinese.

U.S. military space tracking data indicates that the satellite is 622 miles (1,002 kilometers) above the Earth and completes an orbit every 105 minutes. Its orbital inclination of 99.5 degrees to the equator means it is in a near-polar orbit.

While Shiyan 6 (03) launched from Taiyuan, the two previous Shiyan 6 satellites launched on Long March 2D rockets from Jiquan, in the northwest. The earlier satellites launched in November 2018 and July 2020 respectively and operate in lower orbits.

Some interesting details about the Shiyan 6 (03) satellite did become apparent after launch.

China’s National Center for Nanoscience and Technology published an article (Chinese) stating that an ultra-dark “nanocomposite” coating was applied to aid optical systems onboard Shiyan 6. Black coatings help minimize light reflection, which can interfere with the performance of optical sensors.

The center claims the coating has an absorption rate of up to 99.6% across the ultraviolet-visible-near infrared range of the spectrum. It also states that ultra-black coating materials have “broad application prospects in dim target detection, interplanetary navigation, infrared stealth and other areas.”

Reducing the effects of stray light can help assist detecting dimmer objects, including other satellites and space debris.

The mission was China’s ninth of the year; the country is planning to conduct more than 40 launches in 2021. These include a first module for the country’s space station and the crewed Shenzhou 12 mission.

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Keychron K3 wireless keyboard review: compact with compromises,

Keychron’s keyboards are an appealing option for anyone looking for a relatively affordable wireless mechanical keyboard. Its latest model is the Keychron K3, which starts at $74. The K3 combines the low-profile design of the K1 with the compact 75 percent layout of the K2. The result is a keyboard with a slim and compact form factor, with a height that sits somewhere between a typical mechanical keyboard and a keyboard with laptop-style switches.

It’s a tempting prospect if you’re after a compact, portable board that won’t take up too much space in a laptop bag. The K3 also features several other useful features like hot-swappable switch options that let you completely change the feel of your keyboard without having to do any soldering and cross-compatibility with Windows and Mac. But unless you really want or need a thin keyboard, the K3’s low-profile design comes with compromises that hold the keyboard back from being the perfect choice for everybody.

The Keychron K3 is available with either a white backlight for $74 or an RGB backlight for $84. In terms of switches, you have the choice of a set of low-profile switches made by Gateron or a set of Keychron’s hot-swappable optical switches. Keychron claims these optical switches are more responsive and durable, but more important is that, unlike the Gaterons, they’re hot-swappable, meaning you can remove and replace them without having to do any soldering. Varieties of these optical switches include linear (white, red, or black), tactile (brown), or clicky (blue or orange) switches. That’s a good amount of options, and Keychron is currently selling sets of these for $19 (regular price $25).

My model came with a US ANSI layout with RGB backlighting. I primarily used Keychron’s brown optical switches during my time with the K3, but I switched to its stiff clicky orange switches for a few days to see what they were like. Keychron tells me a version of the keyboard with a UK ISO layout will release in July.

If you’re familiar with the keyboard layout used by most laptops, then you’ll immediately feel at home with the Keychron K3’s so-called “75 percent” keyboard layout. It’s a lot more compact than a full-size keyboard layout (one that has a number pad on the side) or even a tenkeyless (same thing, minus the number pad), but it still includes arrow keys and a function row, as well as five out of the six keys normally placed above the arrow key cluster. (There’s no dedicated “Insert” key, but the built-in shortcut is Fn + Delete.) The function row also offers Mac- and Windows-compatible media keys, like brightness and volume control.

Its 75 percent layout includes arrow keys.The compact layout finds room for the most commonly used keys.

For many people, especially those accustomed to a laptop, I suspect this will be all the keys they’ll require, and I never found myself needing a key that’s not present on the keyboard. I also don’t think there are any keys that are wildly misplaced, like the original K1‘s annoyingly easy-to-hit backlighting key. That’s helpful because the Keychron K3 doesn’t let you natively remap its keys, meaning you can’t reconfigure the keyboard to change key locations or add others that might be more important for your needs.

Keychron advertises that you can technically remap your keyboard’s keys at the OS level using programs like Karabiner on the Mac or SharpKeys on Windows, but it’s a bit hacky and means your keyboard’s layout will change if you ever need to connect it to another device. I don’t think most people will have major problems with Keychron’s 75 percent layout, but beware if you’ve got muscle memory built up from using another compact board.

There is one layout customization option built into the keyboard, and that’s a small switch on the top-left of the keyboard to swap it between Mac / iOS and Windows / Android layouts. The keyboard also comes with Mac-specific Command and Option keycaps out of the box, but if you’re a Windows user like me, there are Alt and Windows keys included for you to install on the board during setup. Just use the included keycap puller to whip off the Mac keys and press the Windows keys firmly onto the switches in their place. (Here’s a quick video guide in case you’ve never done this before.)

Swapping the keyboard’s switches is relatively simple.

The other switch on the top left of the K3 is a slider to swap it between its wired and wireless modes. Wired mode works as expected over the K3’s included USB-C cable, while wireless mode lets you pair with up to three devices over Bluetooth 5.1. I paired the K3 with a Surface laptop, iPhone, and iPad, and the keyboard switched between them with no issues.

Wireless users should note that battery life has taken a dip compared to the K2. With the backlight off, Keychron says the K3 should last around 99 hours, down from 240 hours with the K2. With the backlight on, battery life drops as low as 34 hours (down from between 68 and 72 hours). That’s likely because the K3’s slim form factor means Keychron can only fit in a 1,550mAh battery rather than a 4,000mAh one like the K2. I was switching between wired and wireless modes throughout the review period, which meant I never saw the keyboard’s battery life run down to zero. But these numbers mean you’ll likely have to recharge the K3 on a weekly basis if you want to keep the lights on.

On the underside of my review sample, there is a pair of flip-out feet to adjust the angle of the keyboard. I’m told these were added as a revision compared to the first boards, which came with two sets of feet for you to swap between if you wanted to change its angle. I can’t speak for how annoying a system this might have been, but the new feet support two different angles, and they’re easy to use. Keychron tells me it still has stock of the model without flipping feet and that this new model should be in circulation by late May. Build quality is otherwise solid, with little flex in the keyboard’s casing on my model.

The flip-out feet can be set at two different heights.I mean, just look at how thin this thing is.

One of the nicest things about buying a mechanical keyboard with traditional Cherry MX-style switches is the customization options you get. If you want a more colorful or interesting set of keycaps or if the keycaps on your board wear out over time, then it’s normally easy to swap them out for a new set. Swapping out actual switches after the fact is generally a little harder because it often requires soldering, so it’s not popular in quite the same way.

In some ways, the Keychron K3 flips this dynamic on its head. Its hot-swappable keyswitches are easy to swap out without needing to pick up a soldering iron, but while its keycaps are just as easy to remove, there’s not much reason to. That’s because there are no third-party keycaps on the market that are fully compatible with Keychron’s low-profile design at the moment. The Cherry MX-style cross design suggests they should be, but when I tried some I had lying around, the stabilizer alignment on keys like the spacebar didn’t line up. Keychron tells me it plans to release new keycap sets later in the year for the board.

It’s a shame because it would be nice to have the option of replacing Keychron’s stock keycaps. They are made of thin ABS plastic rather than the more premium PBT or thicker ABS, and their gray-and-orange color scheme is plain dull. At least their legends are crisp, they’re nicely curved to let your fingers find their placement, and their double-shot construction allows the keyboard’s backlighting to shine through and illuminate each key label.

Swapping out the switches themselves was much easier than pulling out a soldering iron, though it still took a little bit of elbow grease to remove some of the more stubborn ones using the included tool. It works by clipping the metal hook around each switch and wiggling until it comes free. Swapping out all the switches took me around half an hour while watching TV in the background, plus an extra 15 minutes on either end to deal with the keycaps.

With limited keycap compatibility, you better get used to the K3’s stock caps.

As well as being hot-swappable, the benefit of these low-profile switches is how thin they allow the board itself to be. At its thickest point, it’s a little over 22mm off the surface of your desk, and Keychron boasts that its low-profile optical switches are just 10.77mm tall, compared to 17.9mm for a conventional switch.

But being so low-profile makes these optical switches a bit of an acquired taste. Whether I used the brown optical switches that originally came installed in the board, or the stiff and clicky optical orange switches, I never loved the typing experience of the Keychron K3. It’s not awful. This isn’t a mushy rubber dome or MacBook butterfly keyboard. But the limited key travel of the K3’s low-profile switches feels unsatisfying if you’re used to, and like, regular Cherry MX-style switches.

Here’s what typing sounds like on the Keychron K3 with low-profile optical brown switches:

Here’s what typing sounds like on the Keychron K3 with low profile optical brown switches(opens a new window)

Here’s what typing sounds like on the Keychron K3 with low-profile optical orange switches:

Here’s what typing sounds like on the Keychron K3 with low-profile optical orange switches(opens a new window)

Of the two switches I tried, I preferred the stiff and clicky orange switches over the tactile browns. The stiffness of the orange switches combined with the more tactile click went some way to making up for their low travel, while I ended up making more typos while typing on the browns.

At the end of the day, I just plain like the height of a standard MX switch. That extra distance gives your fingers space to make mistakes and pull back before pressing the wrong key. In contrast, there’s something jarring about having a key bottom out so quickly. If you’re used to typing on slim keyboards like Apple Magic Keyboard, then the K3’s low key travel might feel more pleasant and familiar. But as someone who likes regular MX-style switches, I wasn’t a fan.

There are Windows- and Mac-specific keys in the box.RGB lighting shining through the keycaps.

The Keychron K3 is a feature-packed mechanical keyboard at a reasonable price. It works great over USB-C or wirelessly, and it has a 75 percent layout that covers the keys most people need, as well as a useful selection of function keys on top of that. The hot-swapping process is easy, and Keychron has a suitable selection of switches that work with its hot-swap system.

But Keychron has had to make a series of compromises to make a keyboard this slim, and you have to want a low-profile keyboard to put up with them. Battery life has taken a dip compared to the K2, and the K3’s low-profile switches can be an acquired taste. The lack of support for third-party keycaps is also unfortunate.

If you’ve got a strong preference for a low-profile keyboard and you’re not interested in trying out third-party keycaps, then the K3 is a nice package. But it can’t match the versatility of Keychron’s other boards.

Photography by Jon Porter / The Verge

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SpaceX launches 4 astronauts to space station, nails rocket landing, ,

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX just launched its third astronaut mission in less than a year.

A slightly sooty Falcon 9 rocket topped with a Crew Dragon capsule took to the skies above NASA’s Kennedy Space Center here at 5:49 a.m. EDT (0949 GMT) today (April 23), lighting up the predawn sky as it lifted off from the historic Pad 39A.

The launch kicked off SpaceX’s Crew-2 mission, which will carry four astronauts — NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide — on a 24-hour flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

Live updates: S paceX’s Crew-2 astronaut mission for NASA

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(Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying four Crew-2 astronauts lifts off from NASA’s Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral Florida on April 23, 2021.

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(Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying four Crew-2 astronauts lifts off from NASA’s Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral Florida on April 23, 2021.

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(Image credit: NASA TV)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying four Crew-2 astronauts lifts off from NASA’s Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral Florida on April 23, 2021.

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(Image credit: NASA)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying four Crew-2 astronauts lifts off from NASA’s Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral Florida on April 23, 2021.

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(Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

The Crew-2 astronauts walk out before launch April 23, 2021.

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(Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

The Crew-2 astronauts walk out before launch April 23, 2021.

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying four Crew-2 astronauts lifts off from NASA’s Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral Florida on April 23, 2021. (Image credit: NASA TV)

The launch countdown proceeded smoothly, with the closeout crews completing leak and communications checks ahead of schedule. The crew was relaxed and even enjoyed a quick game that resembled rock, paper, scissors (but was actually a game Thomas played as a kid and shared with his crewmates) while waiting for the leak checks to be completed.

“Our crew is flying astronauts from NASA, ESA and JAXA, which hasn’t happened in over 20 years,” Kimbrough told SpaceX flight controllers just before launch as he thanked the NASA and SpaceX teams. “Off the Earth, for the Earth, Endeavour is ready to go.”

The Falcon 9 put on a breathtaking show this morning as the glows from the rocket’s engines lit up the sky.

“Predawn launches are always amazing,” said Steve Jurzcyk, acting NASA administrator during the webcast. =”It was thrilling to see.”

Meet Crew-2: See the 4 astronauts aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon

The skies were clear enough that onlookers could see the rocket’s engines relight as the first stage made its way back to Earth.

A massive space jellyfish or nebula cloud formed in the sky. These types of trippy effects are typical during twilight conditions present at dawn and dusk, and this morning’s launch did not disappoint.

Crew-2’s launch was one for the history books. It marked several firsts, including the first time that people have flown on a used Crew Dragon and with a used Falcon 9 first stage, and the first time that two different international astronauts have ridden in the capsule.

Crew-2’s launch was one for the history books. It marked several firsts, including the first time that people have flown on a used Crew Dragon and with a used Falcon 9 first stage, and the first time that two different international astronauts have ridden in the capsule.

The Crew Dragon vehicle that launched this morning, known as Endeavour, also lifted off in May of 2020, carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS on the Demo-2 test flight, SpaceX’s first-ever crewed mission. In a nice bit of additional symmetry, Behnken is McArthur’s husband.

“Glad to be back in space for all of us,” Kimbrough radioed SpaceX flight controllers after reaching orbit.

The success of Demo-2 helped usher in a new era in spaceflight — one led by commercial companies.

The rise of private astronaut taxis

In July 2011, the space shuttle Atlantis touched down for the final time, ending the storied career of NASA’s fleet of space shuttles. The winged orbiters were NASA’s human spaceflight workhorses for 30 years and helped build the ISS, which celebrated its 20th anniversary of continuous human occupation last year.

But the shuttle’s days were limited. Just before its retirement, NASA decided that it wanted to hand over the reigns of low Earth orbit to private industry and entrusted two companies to ferry agency astronauts to and from space.

Those companies, SpaceX and Boeing, have worked to build new spacecraft capable of safely carrying astronauts as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which turned 10 years old this year. SpaceX built Crew Dragon, an advanced variant of its robotic Dragon cargo capsule, and Boeing is developing a capsule called CST-100 Starliner.

Since the shuttle’s retirement, every astronaut bound for the ISS had hitched a ride on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft — until Demo-2 brought private vehicles into the mix. Following that successful two-month test mission, NASA certified Crew Dragon to carry astronauts to and from the space station on a regular basis. The first operational Crew Dragon mission, Crew-1, ferried four astronauts to the ISS this past November.

NASA recently took that certification one step further, approving crewed launches that employ preflown Falcon 9 first stages and preflown Crew Dragon capsules. And we saw the effects of that decision today: Endeavour flew on Demo-2, and this particular Falcon 9 first stage also launched Crew-1.

In photos: SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station

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The four Crew-2 astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour are seen aboard their capsule just before launch. They are (from left): Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. (Image credit: SpaceX)SpaceX ramping up

NASA’s first human spaceflight program, Mercury, launched a total of six people into space in the early years of the space age. With today’s liftoff, SpaceX has now put 10 people into orbit in less than 12 months.

“Flying on reused vehicles, on flight-proven vehicles, is key towards greater flight reliability and lowering the cost of access to space, which is what ultimately helps us make life multiplanetary,” SpaceX senior director Benji Reed said during a press briefing earlier this week.

SpaceX recovered its first Falcon 9 booster in December 2015. That first stage delivered a communications satellite into space for OrbComm before returning to Earth and touching down on terra firma at SpaceX’s landing pad here in Florida.

A few months later, the company recovered its first booster on a floating platform at sea, known as a drone ship. Currently, SpaceX has two drone ships in its fleet, named “Of Course I Still Love You” (OCISLY) and “Just Read the Instructions” (JRTI). (Landing on a drone ship at sea is less convenient than a terra firma touchdown but requires significantly less fuel.)

Having two drone ships at its disposal has helped SpaceX with its reusability efforts. In 2020, the company launched a record 26 missions, and only five of those were on brand-new rockets. The rest were on previously flown Falcon 9 rockets, and most of those recoveries came on the deck of a drone ship.

OCISLY was stationed out in the Atlantic Ocean prior to today’s liftoff, waiting patiently for the booster to touch down on its deck. Approximately nine minutes after launch, the booster landed on the ship’s massive deck, marking the 80th Falcon 9 touchdown to date.

That booster, dubbed B1061, damaged one of its landing legs when it touched down after the Crew-1 launch and had a noticeable lean as it sailed back into port.

As NASA’s Deputy certification manager for SpaceX, Carla Koch helps to lead a team that’s tasked with making sure that SpaceX has met the requirements set by NASA to ensure the Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 are safe to fly astronauts.

Koch said that there was some work that had to be done to B1061, including replacing the damaged landing leg, before today’s flight to ensure the launcher was ready to fly another crew.

Her team worked closely with SpaceX to qualify both Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon to fly multiple times. When NASA and SpaceX first partnered to launch astronauts, the agency required that SpaceX use a brand new Falcon and Dragon each launch. (NASA has since given SpaceX the go ahead to reuse both vehicles on crew launches.)

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The Crew-2 astronauts walk out before launch April 23, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

“At the original certification review, after the Demo-2 mission, NASA certified both Falcon and Dragon for one flight,” she told Space.com. “Engineers went back and reviewed both vehicles as well as documentation from SpaceX and subsequently certified the vehicles for two flights.”

“Anything beyond that and SpaceX will need another certification,” she added.

Kock also said that the team is working with SpaceX to eventually certify the Dragon for more flights, since the spacecraft can fly as many as five times before being retired.

SpaceX plans to reuse B1061 on its next crewed flight, which is scheduled to launch this September. That mission will be a little bit different, as it will carry four private citizens into space, as opposed to professional NASA astronauts.

The upcoming mission, known as Inspiration4, will see four citizen astronauts climb aboard a different Dragon crew capsule and spend three days orbiting Earth. The flight will be commanded by Jared Isaacman and is spearheaded as part of an effort to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Isaacman will be joined on the flight by Haley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Chris Sembroski.

A one-day delay

Going into today’s launch, the only concern was the weather. Unfavorable weather, including high winds along the flight path, prevented Crew-2 from getting off the ground on its original launch date of Thursday (April 22). Teams decided to forgo an Earth Day launch and delay the flight 24 hours in hopes that the weather would improve (which, of course, it did).

The four Crew-2 astronauts traveled to the pad approximately three hours before launch this morning, riding in white Tesla Model Xs adorned with the old NASA “worm” logo. Upon arrival, they took an elevator to the crew access arm, which stands approximately 265 feet (81 meters) above the launch pad, and then climbed into the capsule.

After a series of system checkouts, they then armed the Crew Dragon’s abort system, a crucial component in keeping them safe in the event of a launch emergency. SpaceX then began fueling the rocket with supercooled liquid oxygen and kerosene 45 minutes before liftoff.

Endeavour is expected to dock with the space station on Saturday (April 24) at 5:11 a.m. EDT (0911 GMT). The capsule and its four crewmembers will remain at the orbital outpost for six months.

Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Watch live: SpaceX Crew-2 Dragon headed to space station, ,

Live updates: SpaceX’s Crew-2 astronaut mission for NASA

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour is chasing the International Space Station after a successful launch into orbit Friday, April 23, to ferry four astronauts to the orbiting lab. Docking is set for Saturday (April 24) at 5:10 a.m. EDT (0910 GMT).

The mission, called Crew-2, is SpaceX’s third crewed flight for NASA and the second operational flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is carrying NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet on a six-month mission to the International Space Station.

You can watch live coverage of the launch in the window above. A post-launch news conference with NASA and SpaceX officials is scheduled for today at approximately 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT).

NASA TV’s live coverage will continue throughout the astronauts’ 23-hour orbital trip to the International Space Station. The Crew Dragon is scheduled to dock with the station early Saturday (April 24) at 5:10 a.m. EDT (0910 GMT). The astronauts will open the hatch to meet their Expedition 65 crewmembers at 7:15 a.m. EDT (1115 GMT), and a welcome ceremony will follow at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 GMT). You can watch all of these Crew-2 events live here, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly via the agency’s website.

NASA will provide updated coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission with astronauts to the International Space Station. The launch now is targeted for 5:49 a.m. EDT Friday, April 23, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, due to unfavorable weather conditions forecast along the flight path for Thursday.

This is the second crew rotation flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the first with two international partners. The flight follows certification by NASA for regular flights to the space station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

The Crew Dragon is scheduled to dock to the space station about 5:10 a.m. Saturday, April. 24. Prelaunch activities, launch, and docking will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

The Crew-2 flight will carry NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur – who will serve as the mission’s spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively – along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who will serve as mission specialists to the space station for a six-month science mission.

The deadline has passed for media accreditation for in-person coverage of this launch. More information about media accreditation is available by emailing: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov.

All media participation in the following news conferences will be remote except where specifically listed below, and only a limited number of media will be accommodated at Kennedy due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Please note that the Kennedy Press Site facilities will remain closed throughout these events for the protection of Kennedy employees and journalists, except for a limited number of previously credentialed media.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission coverage is as follows (all times Eastern):

Friday, April 23

1:30 a.m. – NASA Television launch coverage begins. NASA Television will have continuous coverage, including docking, hatch opening, and welcome ceremony.

7:30 a.m. (approximately) – Postlaunch news conference with the following participants:

Steve Jurczyk, acting NASA administratorKathy Lueders, associate administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA HeadquartersSteve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew ProgramHiroshi Sasaki, vice president and director general, JAXA’s Human Spaceflight Technology DirectorateFrank de Winne, manager, International Space Station Program, ESASpaceX representative

Saturday, April 24

5:10 a.m. – Docking

7:15 a.m. – Hatch Opening

7:45 a.m. – Welcome Ceremony from the International Space Station with the following participants:

Steve Jurczyk, acting NASA administratorKathy Lueders, associate administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA HeadquartersHiroshi Yamakawa, president, JAXAJosef Aschbacher, director general, ESA

NASA TV Launch Coverage

NASA TV live coverage will begin at 1:30 a.m. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules, and links to streaming video, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/live

Audio only of the news conferences and launch coverage will be carried on the NASA “V” circuits, which may be accessed by dialing 321-867-1220, -1240, -1260 or -7135. On launch day, “mission audio,” countdown activities without NASA TV launch commentary, will be carried on 321-867-7135.

On launch day, a “clean feed” of the launch without NASA TV commentary will be carried on the NASA TV media channel. Launch also will be available on local amateur VHF radio frequency 146.940 MHz and UHF radio frequency 444.925 MHz, heard within Brevard County on the Space Coast.

NASA Website Launch Coverage

Launch day coverage of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission will be available on the agency’s website. Coverage will include livestreaming and blog updates beginning no earlier than 1:30 a.m. Friday, April 23, as the countdown milestones occur. On-demand streaming video and photos of the launch will be available shortly after liftoff. For questions about countdown coverage, contact the Kennedy newsroom at: 321-867-2468. Follow countdown coverage on our launch blog at:

http://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

Public Participation

NASA invites the public to take part in virtual activities and events ahead of the launch. Members of the public can attend the launch virtually, receiving mission updates and opportunities normally reserved for on-site guests.

NASA’s virtual launch experience for Crew-2 includes curated launch resources, a digital boarding pass, notifications about NASA Social interactions, and the opportunity for a virtual launch passport stamp following a successful launch.

Register for email updates or RSVP to the Facebook event for social media updates to stay up-to-date on mission information, mission highlights, and interaction opportunities.

Print, fold and get ready to fill your . Stamps will be emailed following launches to all virtual attendees registered by email through Eventbrite.

Engage kids and students in virtual and hands-on activities that are both family-friendly and educational through Next Gen STEM Commercial Crew.

Watch and Engage on Social Media

Stay connected with the mission on social media via Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram using the hashtag #LaunchAmerica. Follow and tag these accounts:

Twitter: @NASA, @Commercial_Crew, @Space_Station, @NASAKennedyFacebook: NASA, NASA Commercial Crew, ISS Facebook, Kennedy Space CenterInstagram: NASA, ISS Instagram, NASA Kennedy

NASA will provide a live video feed of Launch Complex 39A approximately 48 hours prior to the planned liftoff of the Crew-2 mission. Pending unlikely technical issues, the feed will be uninterrupted until the prelaunch broadcast begins on NASA TV, approximately four hours prior to launch.

Once the feed is live, it will be available here:

http://youtube.com/kscnewsroom

Make sure to check out NASA en Espanol on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for more Spanish-language coverage on Crew-2.

Para obtener informacion sobre cobertura en espanol en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en espanol, comuniquese con Kristina Irastorza 321-607-4073 y Antonia Jaramillo 321-501-8425.

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program has delivered on its goal of safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station from the United States through a partnership with American private industry. This partnership is changing the arc of human spaceflight history by opening access to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station to more people, more science, and more commercial opportunities. The space station remains the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in space exploration, including future missions to the Moon and, eventually, to Mars.

For NASA’s launch blog and more information about the mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

Find out what the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station are up to by tuning in to the “ISS Live” broadcast. Hear conversations between the crew and mission controllers on Earth and watch them work inside the U.S. segment of the orbiting laboratory. When the crew is off duty, you can enjoy live views of Earth from Space. You can watch and listen in the window below, courtesy of NASA.

“Live video from the International Space Station includes internal views when the crew is on-duty and Earth views at other times. The video is accompanied by audio of conversations between the crew and Mission Control. This video is only available when the space station is in contact with the ground. During ‘loss of signal’ periods, viewers will see a blue screen.

“Since the station orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes, it experiences a sunrise or a sunset about every 45 minutes. When the station is in darkness, external camera video may appear black, but can sometimes provide spectacular views of lightning or city lights below.”

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SpaceX launches its third astronaut crew, the first on a used Crew Dragon capsule,

SpaceX launched its third crew of astronauts to the International Space Station early Friday morning, reusing a Crew Dragon space capsule to fly humans for the first time. The mission, dubbed Crew-2, is the latest flight under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and will add four more astronauts to the orbital space station.

A used Falcon 9 rocket, last flown for SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission last year, lifted off at 5:49AM ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida carrying Endeavor, the same Crew Dragon capsule that first launched SpaceX’s debut astronaut mission nearly one year ago. For this flight, the Endeavor capsule carried four astronauts from three different countries — SpaceX’s most diverse NASA-managed crew yet.

“Off the Earth, for the Earth, Endeavor is ready to go,” NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, the mission’s spacecraft commander, told SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California minutes before lifting off.

3.. 2.. 1.. and liftoff! Endeavour launches once again. Four astronauts from three countries on Crew-2, now making their way to the one and only @Space_Station: pic.twitter.com/WDAl8g7bUK

— NASA (@NASA)

April 23, 2021

Kimbrough and fellow NASA astronaut Megan McArthur, serving as the pilot, accompanied mission specialists Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Thomas Pesquet, a French aerospace engineer from the European Space Agency (ESA). The crew will spend nearly 24 hours in transit as Endeavor autonomously raises its orbit toward the ISS ahead of a 5:10AM ET docking tomorrow, April 24th.

Sunlight beamed into the windows of Crew Dragon Endeavor as it separated from its Falcon 9 second stage booster roughly 12 minutes after the pre-dawn liftoff, prompting cheers and applause from engineers on a live video feed in SpaceX’s mission control. “Thanks for flying our first flight-proven, crewed Falcon 9,” mission control said to the Endeavor crew, confirming a successful arrival in orbit.

“We’re great, glad to be back in space for all of us, and we’ll send our regards to Crew-1 when we get there,” Kimbrough, seen on live camera feeds from inside Crew Dragon, replied from Endeavor. A stuffed penguin toy, serving as a microgravity indicator, rose from under the astronauts’ seats once they reached orbit. The capsule’s separation occurred just after Falcon 9’s first stage booster returned back to Earth for landing on SpaceX’s “Of Course I Still Love You” drone-ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Rocket exhaust from SpaceX’s Crew-2 launch appears in Earth’s atmosphere, illuminated by early morning sunlight as it ascends toward space.Photo by GREGG NEWTON/AFP via Getty Images

Kimbrough, McArthur, Hoshide and Pesquet will spend six months in space and join seven astronauts already aboard the space station, an orbital science laboratory flying more than 17,000 miles per hour in orbit roughly 250 miles above Earth. Two days after the crew’s arrival, four other astronauts from SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission, which launched to the ISS November 15 last year, will board a separate Crew Dragon capsule and return to Earth to cap their own six-month stay.

Crew-2 marks SpaceX’s third astronaut mission under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, the agency’s public-private initiative to revive its human spaceflight capabilities after a nearly 10-year dependence on Russian rockets. It’s the second of six operational missions SpaceX is contracted to fly under that program, which awarded the company $2.6 billion in 2014 to develop and fly Crew Dragon. SpaceX’s first crewed mission in May 2020, carrying Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, counted as a test flight.

The Crew-2 mission marked another reusability milestone for SpaceX, which has launched and reused dozens of Falcon 9 rockets and uncrewed Dragon capsules in the past. This mission was the first to reuse a Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule for flying humans, a capability NASA approved as a modification to SpaceX’s contract last year. That spares SpaceX and NASA the time and money that otherwise would’ve been spent building new capsules for each mission.

The Endeavor capsule went through light refurbishment at SpaceX’s facilities in Cape Canaveral — nicknamed “Dragonland” — after splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico last year with Hurley and Behnken inside. Most of the hardware on the capsule remained, but its thermal shielding, parachutes and some internal fuel valves, were swapped for new ones.

Accompanied by two Russian cosmonauts and NASA’s Mark Vande Hei, who all launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket on April 9th, Crew-2’s stay aboard the ISS will make for an 7-person crew in space for the next several months. During their stay, the crew will conduct an array of microgravity science experiments. The Crew-2 astronauts’ science efforts will center on a cassette-sized device containing human cells to study how those cells respond to various drugs and health conditions in microgravity.

The increased crew size means other science experiments, including a few projects tracking how plants grow and behave in space, will also see some progress. “It’s like a party up there,” said Annmarie Eldering, a project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3, a device astronauts will use to measure carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. “When you get all those measurements from space, in the same time, same place, it’s really powerful for science,” Eldering said Friday morning in a live NASA broadcast.

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On This Day in Space! April 22, 2010: X-37B space plane launches on 1st top-secret mission, ,

On April 22, 2010, the U.S. Air Force launched the super-secret X-37B space plane on its first spaceflight.

This space plane is also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle. It looks a lot like NASA’s space shuttle, only it’s much smaller and doesn’t have any windows. But the X-37B doesn’t need windows anyway, because no one actually flies in it. It’s completely autonomous and can even land on a runway without a human pilot.

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Artist’s illustration of the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B space plane. (Image credit: Boeing)

The X-37B has flown several highly classified payloads on long-duration missions. For its first flight, the X-37B launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral and it orbited the Earth for 224 days. The Air Force never disclosed what kind of experiments were going on during that time.

Catch up on our entire “On This Day In Space” series on YouTube with this playlist.

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Still not enough space? Don’t forget to check out our Space Image of the Day, and on the weekends our Best Space Photos and Top Space News Stories of the week.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Celebrate Earth Day 2021 with this ‘beau-tree-ful’ Google Doodle, ,

Earth Day 2021 is here and the folks at Google hope it plants a tree in your heart with this adorable Google doodle of one family’s tree-planting legacy.

“The planet we call home continues to nurture life and inspire wonder. Our environment works hard to sustain us, which calls for us to return the favor,” Google wrote in a description. “Today’s video Doodle shows a variety of trees being planted within natural habitats, one of the many ways we can do our part to keep our Earth healthy for future generations.”

If it makes you feel like planting a tree yourself, well, that’s the point.

“This Earth Day — and everyday — we encourage everyone to find one small act they can do to restore our Earth,” Google wrote. “It’s bound to take root and blossom into something beautiful.”

Related: Earth quiz — Do you really know your planet?

In space, NASA and its international partners operate a fleet of satellites to track the health of trees and other vegetation on Earth, as well as their impact on our planet’s ecosystem. Earth-observing satellites like NASA’s Suomi NPP and the Landsat missions flown by the space agency and U.S. Geological Survey monitor deforestation damage caused by humans and how it affects our planet.

“Satellites can detect how ‘green’ an area is — showing the health of plants that are growing in a particular site,” NASA wrote in a description. “While fires, deforestation and drought lead to the tropical Amazon being less green, warming temperatures in the Arctic lead to tundra and boreal regions becoming greener.”

Plants in Space: Photos by Gardening Astronauts

Satellite data is also used to monitor vital vegetation like farmland, to assist farmers in food production.

“Having more information about rainfall, plant health and other data gives farmers information they use to deal with the extreme weather events that are increasing due to climate change, as well as shifting planting zones and other effects like early freezes and heavier spring rains,” NASA officials wrote. “These same satellites can also help scientists track the unwanted products of some agricultural fields, including runoff that flows into waterways. Farms, forests, tundra — all these vegetated ecosystems connect to other spheres of our home planet.”

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.

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Fly around SpaceX’s Crew-2 rocket at the launch pad with this drone video, ,

SpaceX’s next astronaut launch for NASA is just a day away from liftoff and you can catch a close-up look at the mission’s rocket on the launch pad in a new drone video.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on the Crew-2 mission Friday (April 23). Liftoff is set for 5:49 a.m. EDT (0949 GMT) from the historic Pad 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida

With dark clouds and a yellow sky adding some dramatic lighting, the new drone video pans slowly around Pad 39A showing SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and its Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft. The big structure looming beside the rocket is the gantry tower for electrical and consumable connections; the tower also allows the four Crew-2 astronauts to access the spacecraft just prior to launch.

Related: SpaceX is launching 200 experiments to space on Crew-2 flight
Live updates: SpaceX’s Crew-2 astronaut mission for NASA

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The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew Dragon Endeavour stands atop Pad 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on April 18, 2021. It will launch the Crew-2 astronauts to the International Space Station on April 23. (Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

The Crew-2 team includes NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, the European Space Agency’s Thomas Pesquet and the Japanese Aerospace Agency’s Akihiko Hoshide, who have all been to space before in various space shuttle and International Space Station missions. Their mission was originally scheduled to launch on Thursday (April 22), but was delayed one day due to weather concerns.

The mission represents SpaceX’s third commercial crew ferry after Demo-2 – which sent two astronauts to space during a test flight in August 2020, the first such flight from American soil in almost a decade – and Crew-1, the first operational Crew Dragon mission that launched four people in November.

“It’s awesome to be here at Kennedy Space Center,” Kimbrough, the Crew-2 mission commander said to the media on the same day as the launch dress rehearsal Sunday (April 18). “We’ve had some training already this morning, yesterday we got to go out to the pad to see the rocket and our spacecraft, which is really exciting for us.”

SpaceX is busy figuring out its flight manifest with NASA, with Crew-3 expected to lift off around Oct. 23, and Crew-4 slated for 2022. Boeing’s Starliner is not yet authorized to carry astronauts to space for commercial crew, having failed to reach the ISS as planned during an uncrewed test in 2019.

Related: SpaceX’s Crew-2 astronaut mission in photos

Boeing — which has been facing technical and weather delays in trying again — is waiting for an ISS docking slot to open up for a second uncrewed test. The next flight will likely be August or September, Boeing said Saturday (April 17), although the company added it will “evaluate options if an earlier launch opportunity becomes available.”

This situation means Starliner may not fly people until at least 2022. NASA has been acquiring a few seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry astronauts in the meantime, to meet its crew manifest requirements in space.

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Telescope lasers could give humanity an edge in war against space junk, ,

Telescope operators figured out years ago how to make the stars stop twinkling. Now, a team of Australian scientists wants to use the same technology to track space junk and blast it out of space.

The problem is Earth’s atmosphere: It’s uneven and distorts light passing from space to Earth, and Earth to space. That’s a problem, because the nice twinkly effect Earth’s atmosphere gives stars makes it difficult for ground-based telescopes to accurately observe the heavens. It’s also a problem for efforts to lower the risk of space junk, which threatens satellites and crewed spaceflight, as Live Science previously reported. Ground-based stations use lasers to track individual pieces of space debris, but those lasers get distorted by the same atmospheric effects that make stars twinkle. Now, researchers want to use “adaptive optics,” a technology that enables telescopes to de-twinkle the stars, to improve those laser systems.

“Without adaptive optics, a telescope sees an object in space like a blob of light,” Australian National University scientist and lead researcher on this project Celine D’Orgeville said in a statement. “But with adaptive optics, these objects become easier to see and their images become a lot sharper.”

Essentially, adaptive optics cuts through the distortion in our atmosphere, making sure we can clearly see the incredible images our powerful telescopes capture.

Related: Here’s every spaceship that’s ever carried an astronaut into orbit

Adaptive optics work in telescopes by projecting an artificial star onto the sky using a laser of visible light. The system knows what the laser star should look like, so the system can actively determine how the atmosphere is distorting light. It then uses that information to correct the image the telescope is capturing, back-calculating what the light looked like before the atmosphere smeared it.

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The researchers built a version of this laser for space junk tracking. It’s mounted on an Australian telescope used to image and track space junk, and it can help fine-tune and guide a laser used to take precise measurements of that junk.

Down the road, researchers have plans to use lasers like that to move space junk around or even push it out of orbit. The adaptive optics technology, the researchers said, could aid in that effort. In the short-term, they have plans to sell it through a private company to firms interested in tracking space junk.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Emissions slowdown during COVID-19 not enough to improve climate trends, report finds, ,

As humanity was forced to sit at home for a considerable part of 2020 to help prevent the spread of the worldwide coronavirus outbreak, the world’s space agencies and research institutes were quick to point out the positives: the dissipating air pollution clouds over major cities, visible in satellite images, and widespread reductions in concentrations of pesky pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. In fact, so we were told, nature was healing as humankind struggled, and dolphins spotted in the canals of Venice were supposed to be the proof.

The State of the Global Climate 2020 report released on Monday (April 19) by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations body promoting international cooperation in atmospheric science, climatology, and hydrology, shows the optimism was rather premature. In fact, concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere continued to rise in 2020. The concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most notorious climate warming agent, reached 410 parts per million, up from 408 in 2018, the report states.

Related: Dropped emissions during COVID-19 lockdown will do ‘nothing’ for climate change

Moreover, 2020 was one of three warmest years on record despite the developing La Nina effect, a climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that usually cools the climate. Average global temperatures climbed 2.16 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, inching closer to the 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) limit set out in the Paris Agreement, signed at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Just as in previous years, the warming proceeded twice as fast in the Arctic as in the rest of the world, causing record shrinkage of Arctic sea ice in the period between July and October 2020.

As Maxx Dilley, the director of the Climate Program at WMO, told Space.com, the COVID-19 economic slowdown didn’t make much of a dent in the data.

“The greenhouse gas concentrations continued to rise at an increasing rate even though there was a measurable reduction in the emissions,” Dilley said. “The COVID-19 slowdown was too short and too little to make any measurable difference to the concentrations.”

Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which processes data from Europe’s environment-monitoring Copernicus satellite constellations and contributed to the report, told Space.com that while in Europe the pandemic led to a decrease in emissions of around 8%, it only slightly slowed down the rate at which the greenhouse gas concentrations were growing.

The concentrations, Dilley explained, are cumulative. New emissions add to the concentrations already in the atmosphere unless the natural carbon sinks, which the planet uses to maintain balance, absorb more carbon than humans emit.

But as the report pointed out, these natural greenhouse gas removal mechanisms might be getting less efficient because of the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The ocean absorbs about 23% of all human-made CO2 emissions, but as this CO2 reacts with seawater, the water becomes more acidic. The more acidic the water, the worse its ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, the report states. The trend of increasing acidity (decreasing pH), first detected in the 1980s, continued in 2019 and 2020 unabated, according to the report.

“The emissions are coming more quickly than the [carbon] sinks are reacting to them,” Dilley said. “There are still many scientific unknowns about the absorption capacity of the oceans and when that is expected to plateau. In fact, a lot of methane is trapped in the sea floor, frozen by the combination of high pressure and low temperature, and at some point, that might be released as well.”

The report also found that the temperature of the global ocean was the highest on record in 2019 in depths up to 2,000 meters (1.2 miles). Although the 2020 data have not yet been fully processed, a preliminary analysis suggested that 2020 was on a trajectory to set a new record, the report stated.

The report, according to Dilley, sends a strong signal that the world is nowhere near to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, which binds countries to work towards keeping the global average temperature rise below 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C), but preferably below 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), compared to pre-industrial levels.

“The report shows that we are already 1.2 ?C on pre-industrial levels and the CO2 concentrations are still going up,” Dilley said. “WMO is calling on the countries to raise their ambitions so that we change the trajectory, that the emissions start going down and the concentrations start to level off and we start moving away from this abyss.”

The report also stated that six warmest years on record have all taken place since 2011, making the 2011-2020 decade by far the warmest since measurements began.

“These findings highlight the need to strengthen our efforts to reduce emissions and meet the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement,” Buontempo said. “This report highlights how sustained effort is needed to curb the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and consequently minimise the changes in global climate.”

A temperature rise above the levels recommended by the Paris Agreement would result in dangerous shifts in the Earth’s equilibrium, an increase in frequency and severity of devastating weather events, unsafe sea level rise, widespread disruption to agriculture and erosion of biodiversity, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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