WASHINGTON — At NASA headquarters on Tuesday, officials introduced two prototype spacesuits to be used during upcoming moon missions.
The new spacesuits will offer improvements over existing models for the men and women expected to wear them, including greater comfort and movement! Videos for NASA's New Spacesuits Unveiled, For 1:20 NASA unveils new spacesuit prototypes for missions MSN!! And as NASA races to meet the Trump administration's 2024 target for returning to the moon, the agency needs to make that astronauts have the technological capability to safely set foot on the surface, which no human has done since 1972.
"We've been working for a long time to build spacesuits that will do the job on the moon and going on to Mars," said Amy Ross, a spacesuit engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
* * *
One spacesuit, with a colorful bright red, white and blue pattern, is called the exploration extravehicular mobility unit. That is what astronauts will wear as they explore the moon's surface.
In case you are keeping track:
NASA's First All-Female Spacewalk Is Scheduled for Later This Month | PEOPLE.com
NASA canceled their first attempt at an all-female spacewalk in March after problems with finding properly fitting spacesuits
The first all-female spacewalk ever is back on after it was abruptly postponed earlier this year by NASA .
International Space Station astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will be participating in the historic event on October 21, the agency announced in a tweet that listed their upcoming spacewalks . While there have been over 200 ISS spacewalks, only 15 women have ever participated in them, Space.com notes! 3:42 NASA unveils new spacesuits designed to outperform those used in Apollo program NBC News!! Each time, they have been joined by a man.
This is the second attempt by NASA to conduct an all-female walk, which was first tried in March with Koch and astronaut Anne McClain. Kristen Facciol of the Canadian Space Agency was set to provide ground support at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as the astronauts ventured outside of the ISS.
NASA and the Search for Water on the Moon - The Atlantic
Not liquid water, but grains of water ice. The discovery helped reshape our understanding of Earth's satellite! New Spacesuit Unveiled for Starliner Astronauts | NASA www.nasa.gov /feature/ ...unveiled ...Astronauts heading into orbit aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will wear lighter and more comfortable spacesuits than earlier suits astronauts wore. New Spacesuit Unveiled for Starliner Astronauts | NASA!! Though scientists had long believed that the moon was quite dry, they had begun to harbor suspicions that water might lurk somewhere in its shadowy regions! NASA unveils new spacesuits for moon mission | Reuters.com www.reuters.com /video/2019/10/15/ nasa - unveils - new - ...moon-mis?...NASA unveiled two new spacesuits designed for the space agency's Artemis moon mission to take Americans back to the moon by 2024.!! The excavated material showed them they were right to wonder! NASA unveils new spacesuits astronauts will wear on the ...www.nbcnews.com /mach/science/ nasa - unveil - new - ...will-wear...NASA unveiled two new spacesuits , one to be worn aboard the Orion spacecraft and another, called the xEMU, for use on the lunar surface. The suits are designed to outperform those used during the...!! It wasn't much, but it was enough to suggest there was a lot more.
* * *
The moon had a dry reputation from the very beginning. According to the leading theory, it formed from the debris of a collision between Earth and a Mars-size object about 4.5 billion years ago. The impact was so fiery that scientists suspected that any water, whether it came from Earth or the mystery object, would have boiled away for good.
Scientists tested this theory, a decade later, with force. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) arrived at the moon in 2009 with a rocket booster, now empty, that had helped launch it into space. Hurled down to the surface, the projectile exhumed those grains of pure water ice, hidden in darkness for perhaps billions of years, and lofted them into the light.
NASA's Bridenstine: SpaceX and Boeing could fly astronauts early 2020
LOS ANGELES – SpaceX and Boeing are each in the final stages of developing the spacecraft needed for the U.S. to once again fly astronauts, with NASA's leader estimating launches may happen as early as the first months of 2020.
"I think both systems could be ready in the first quarter of next year," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told CNBC on Thursday.
Bridenstine hopes to see both companies quickly reach the point of being able to safely launch NASA astronauts. The capsules are being built under NASA's Commercial Crew program, which is the agency's solution to end reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. In 2014, NASA awarded contracts to SpaceX for up to $2.6 billion and Boeing for up to $4.2 billion. Future Commercial Crew contracts would be up for grabs, as NASA would look to buy seats on Boeing's Starliner capsule and SpaceX's Crew Dragon. Delays have plagued the program, as NASA intended the first launches to happen as early as 2017.
In case you are keeping track:
Veteran astronauts endorse NASA's program for a return to the Moon | Ars Technica
On Monday during a conference held in Houston, several veteran astronauts endorsed NASA's plan to return to the Moon. However, they also characterized the goal of landing humans there by 2024 as aspirational rather than realistic.
"It's quite aggressive," said four-time astronaut Michael López-Alegría of the Artemis Program's five-year timeline. López-Alegría, who is president of the Association of Space Explorers, made his comments during the organization's annual meeting.
He added that it was not a bad thing to have an aggressive plan. Rather, it was good for NASA and its international partners to have a clear goal to work toward. "I think that in any complex program like that, somebody needs to draw a line in the sand," he said. "It may be aspirational, but without something like that, it's really difficult to get people pulling in the same direction."
After Sparring, NASA and SpaceX Declare a Shared Mission - The New York Times
A visit by the NASA administrator to a rocket factory is usually a predictable show-and-tell of the latest gadgets destined for outer space.
But there may have been some tension below the surface on Thursday when the current administrator, Jim Bridenstine, stopped by the headquarters of SpaceX, the private rocket company of the billionaire Elon Musk, in Hawthorne, Calif. SpaceX is a major contractor for NASA.
Mr. Bridenstine and Mr. Musk had been exchanging nettlesome messages for the past two weeks. Thursday's visit might have been as much about smoothing over ruffled feelings as viewing space hardware.
Taking questions from reporters, both men were complimentary toward each other and said they shared the same goals: to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule as soon as possible, but not before the spacecraft had passed all of the needed tests.
Introducing our next-generation spacesuit for #Artemis missions! Here, spacesuit engineer Kristine Davis demonstrat… https://t.co/Wt8ZYJF78R NASA Tue Oct 15 18:41:16 +0000 2019
NASA's new lunar spacesuit, called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, designed so astronauts can walk ar… https://t.co/wB4pAJhQr4 thesheetztweetz (from Southern California & New York) Tue Oct 15 18:05:29 +0000 2019
NASA's Artemis program aims to land the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024, and the agency has reveal… https://t.co/9atEnConx3 CNN Tue Oct 15 21:45:08 +0000 2019
A new look at a recent milestone for the most powerful and complex space science telescope ever created! 🎦 Watch a… https://t.co/mOupAoHMix NASA Sun Oct 13 19:00:58 +0000 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment