...the who's who,
and the what's what 
of the space industry

Copernical Team

Copernical Team

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Houston TX (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 mission is set to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon on Earth Day, April 22. The four include NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur and, a first for the Commercial Crew Program, two international partners, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and ESA (European Space Agency) astrona
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Moscow (Sputnik) Apr 21, 2021
The first module of Russia's new space station will be ready for launch in 2025, this will be the Science Power Module, originally intended for the International Space Station (ISS), Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin announced on Tuesday. In mid-April, the Russian Academy of Sciences announced that Russia would terminate its participation in the ISS
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London, UK (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
The next Arianespace mission is planned from Vostochny Cosmodrome with Soyuz on April 26, to deliver 36 satellites into orbit. By operating this fifth flight on behalf of OneWeb, Arianespace will bring the total fleet to 182 satellites in Low Earth Orbit. Arianespace is proud to share in the fulfilment of its customer's ultimate ambition: providing internet access for everyone, everywhere.
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Bay St. Louis MS (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
Crews at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, worked April 19-20 to remove the first flight core stage of the agency's Space Launch System rocket from the B-2 Test Stand in preparation for its transport to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Operations required crews to lift the core stage from its vertical placement in the stand and lower it to a horizontal position on the
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Boca Raton FL (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
American Pacific Corporation, a leading manufacturer of propulsion related materials for the Aerospace, Space and Defense industries, announced today that it has made a minority investment in Frontier Aerospace, a leader in the space propulsion industry. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Frontier Aerospace marks American Pacific's first investment since being acquired by AE Indu
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Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter departed Earth for its 293 million mile trip to Mars aboard the Perseverance Rover last July. However, Ingenuity's most important journey was only about 10 feet. That's the altitude the small helicopter hovered just above the surface of Mars, marking a major milestone for humanity: the launch was the first powered flight on another planet and proof that it's possibl
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Melbourne, Australia (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
Yesterday at 9pm Australian Eastern standard time, the Ingenuity helicopter - which landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover in February - took off from the Martian surface. More importantly, it hovered for about 30 seconds, three metres above the surface and came right back down again. It may not sound like a huge feat, but it is. Ingenuity's flight is the first powered flight of an air
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Canberra, Australia (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a radical technology that would allow faster than light travel: the warp drive, a hypothetical way to skirt around the universe's ultimate speed limit by bending the fabric of reality. It was an intriguing idea - even NASA has been researching it at the Eagleworks laboratory - but Alcubierre's proposal contained problems that seemed insurmounta
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Washington DC (UPI) Apr 20, 2021
SpaceX and NASA plan to send four astronauts to the International Space Station on Thursday from Florida aboard the first reused Crew Dragon capsule to carry people. Liftoff of the flight-proven spacecraft, Endeavour, and Falcon 9 rocket is planned for 6:11 a.m. EDT from Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center. The space agency declared the mission "go for launch" after a launch readiness re
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Astronauts' mental health risks tested in the Antarctic
NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg watches Earth from the Cupola Observational Module of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Astronauts who spend extended time in space face stressors such as isolation, confinement, lack of privacy, altered light-dark cycles, monotony and separation from family. Interestingly, so do people who work at international research stations in Antarctica, where the extreme environment is characterized by numerous stressors that mirror those present during long-duration space exploration.

To better understand the psychological hurdles faced by astronauts, University of Houston professor of psychology Candice Alfano and her team developed the Mental Health Checklist (MHCL), a self-reporting instrument for detecting mental health changes in isolated, confined, extreme (ICE) environments. The team used the MHCL to study at two Antarctic stations. The findings are published in Acta Astronautica.

"We observed significant changes in psychological functioning, but patterns of change for specific aspects of mental health differed. The most marked alterations were observed for positive emotions such that we saw continuous declines from the start to the end of the mission, without evidence of a 'bounce-back effect' as participants were preparing to return home," reports Alfano.

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