Copernical Team
All aboard! Next stop space...
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Several hundred people have already booked their tickets and begun training for a spectacular voyage: a few minutes, or perhaps days, in the weightlessness of space.
The mainly wealthy first-time space travellers are getting ready to take part in one of several private missions which are preparing to launch.
The era of space tourism is on the horizon 60 years after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.
Two companies, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, are building spacecraft capable of sending private clients on suborbital flights to the edge of space lasting several minutes.
Glenn King is the director of spaceflight training at the National Aerospace Training and Research Center, a private company based in Pennsylvania which has already trained nearly 400 future Virgin Galactic passengers for their trips.
NASA space copter ready for first Mars flight
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The helicopter that NASA has placed on Mars could make its first flight over the Red Planet within two days after a successful initial test of its rotors, the US space agency said Friday.
The current plan for the first-ever attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet is for the four-pound (1.8 kilogram) helicopter, dubbed the Ingenuity, to take off from Mars' Jezero Crater on Sun 40th anniversary of first space shuttle orbital mission a bittersweet occasion
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The 40th anniversary Monday of the first orbital flight of a space shuttle - Columbia - evokes the accomplishments of the program, but also a grim reminder of tragedies during its existence.
The first shuttle orbital flight in April 1981 revolutionized space exploration because it proved a reusable, piloted space plane could succeed.
But that legacy also offered perilous lesson Three-man crew docks at ISS after flight honouring Gagarin
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A three-man crew docked at the international Space Station Friday after a flight honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space.
A Soyuz capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei docked at 1105 GMT, footage broadcasted by NASA TV showed.
"There is contact!" Russia's space age Biden proposes 6.3% boost for NASA in budget proposal
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President Joe Biden is seeking $24.7 billion for NASA in his 2022 budget released Friday, boosting funding for the agency's Artemis program as well as weather and climate efforts.
The budget request represents a 6.3% increase over the $23.27 billion funding NASA received in the 2021 fiscal year.
Steve Jurczyk, NASA's acting administrator, said the funding demonstrates Biden's "co Sperms in Space and the Lust for Power Grips Voyagers in Theaters April 9th
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Every space event always seems to have a chuckle about sex in space. But the no jargon crowd at NASA somehow magnified the power of sex by denying it to the Voyagers crew. The opening scene with our little swimmers marching to pierce the goal only belies the race to save man.
One dad for all kids being grown to launch with the premise that if they don't see the outside of the box they won' NASA's Mars Helicopter to make first flight attempt Sunday
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NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is two days away from making humanity's first attempt at powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. If all proceeds as planned, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) rotorcraft is expected to take off from Mars' Jezero Crater Sunday, April 11, at 12:30 p.m. local Mars solar time (10:54 p.m.
New research reveals secret to Jupiter's curious aurora activity
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Auroral displays continue to intrigue scientists, whether the bright lights shine over Earth or over another planet. The lights hold clues to the makeup of a planet's magnetic field and how that field operates.
New research about Jupiter proves that point—and adds to the intrigue.
Peter Delamere, a professor of space physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, is among an international team of 13 researchers who have made a key discovery related to the aurora of our solar system's largest planet.
The team's work was published April 9, 2021, in the journal Science Advances. The research paper, titled "How Jupiter's unusual magnetospheric topology structures its aurora," was written by Binzheng Zhang of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hong Kong; Delamere is the primary co-author.
Research done with a newly developed global magnetohydrodynamic model of Jupiter's magnetosphere provides evidence in support of a previously controversial and criticized idea that Delamere and researcher Fran Bagenal of the University of Colorado at Boulder put forward in a 2010 paper—that Jupiter's polar cap is threaded in part with closed magnetic field lines rather than entirely with open magnetic field lines, as is the case with most other planets in our solar system.
Three-man crew docks at ISS after flight honouring Gagarin (Update)
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A three-man crew blasted off to the International Space Station Friday in a capsule honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei lifted off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at the expected time of 0742 GMT, footage broadcast by NASA TV showed, with docking expected at 1107 GMT.
A NASA commentator citing Russian Mission Control reports confirmed that the Soyuz capsule had entered orbit, with all stages of the flight proceeding as expected.
"Hey, Expedition 64 –- set the dinner table... Can't wait to join you on @Space_Station in a few hours!" Vande Hei tweeted to the crew on board the ISS before blast-off.
The launch came just ahead of Monday's anniversary of Gagarin's historic flight on April 12, 1961.
