July 21st, 2021
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Legislation from Senior Ways and Means Democrat would tax space travel for non-scientific research purposes As the space tourism race continues today, U.S. Rep Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, previewed a new space tax. The Securing Protections Against Carbon Emissions (SPACE) Tax Act would create new excise taxes […]
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From Niall McCarthy, Data Journalist at Statista.com: Once denied the chance to go into space by the U.S. government due to her gender back in the 1960s, Wally Funk finally fulfilled her lifelong dream yesterday. Funk is a highly experienced pilot with a whopping 18,600 hours in the cockpit and she was part of Jeff […]
Three Chinese astronauts, Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo, have worked and lived in the space station core module for a month since the Shenzhou-12 piloted spacecraft was launched into space. The astronauts have been in good condition after completing their first extravehicular operations, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). A second […]
China has flown a reusable suborbital carrier, a craft that touched down at an airport in Alxa League in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Launched on Friday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Gobi Desert, the maiden flight of the prototype of a reusable suborbital aerospace plane was declared successful. […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3179 tasks. Reports Susanne Schwenzer, a planetary geologist at The Open University; Milton Keynes, U.K., the rover’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) have been looking at the drill fines of the “Pontours” drill hole – the robot’s 32nd […]
Thales Alenia Space in Rome and Axiom Space of Houston, Texas have signed the final contract for the development of two key pressurized elements of Axiom Space Station – the world’s first commercial space station. Scheduled for launch in 2024 and 2025 respectively, the two elements will originally be docked to the International Space Station […]
Wonders All Around: The Incredible True Story of Astronaut Bruce McCandless II and the First Untethered Flight in Space by Bruce McCandless III; Greenleaf Book Group Press; 284 pages; Hardcover: $24.95. We have all seen that iconic image – an astronaut in a snow-white spacesuit, untethered and floating free above Earth. Bruce McCandless II made […]
Work is underway on the International Space Station to receive Russia’s new Nauka Multifunctional Laboratory Module. The Nauka Module is set for a ride atop a Proton-M booster on July 21. Meanwhile, crewmembers on the ISS are preparing the Pirs Module for undocking from the Russian segment of the ISS. Pirs is to be […]
Given the highly successful and ongoing flights of the Ingenuity helicopter on the Red Planet at Jezero Crater, engineers are turning their attention to future aerial craft for Mars. One concept is the Hexacopter, advocated as a way to greatly expand the exploration zone on Mars – including possible deep dives into Martian caves. Technologists […]
The first batch of lunar samples retrieved by China’s Chang’e-5 mission were distributed on Monday to domestic scientific research institutions. The samples were picked up from the Moon in December 2020 by the Chang’e-5 lunar probe, the first lunar soil sample collection brought back to Earth in more than four decades. The probe returned […]
