NASA USES REFLECTED MOONLIGHT TO IMPROVE SATELLITE ACCURACY - NASA’s airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance, or air-LUSI, flew aboard NASA’s ER-2 aircraft from March 12 to 16 to accurately measure the amount of light reflected off the Moon. Reflected moonlight is a steady source of light that researchers are taking advantage of to improve the accuracy and consistency of measurements among Earth-observing satellites. More (Source: SciTechDaily - Apr 7)
NO, RUSSIAN COSMONAUTS WERE NOT MAKING A PRO-UKRAINE STATEMENT WITH THEIR SPACESUITS - A NASA astronaut who just returned from the International Space Station says his Russian counterparts who boarded the ISS wearing yellow and blue spacesuits were not doing so to support Ukraine. Mark Vande Hei, who returned to Earth on March 30 after nearly a year in space, said the yellow and blue colors represent the university the Russian cosmonauts attended. More (Source: NPR - Apr 7)
SPACEWALKS, CREWED MISSIONS, AND SCIENCE: MARCH IN ORBIT ABOARD THE ISS - NASASpaceFlight.com Forums L2 Sign Up Artemis SpaceX Commercial ISS International Other Shop Spacewalks, crewed missions, and science: March in orbit aboard the ISS written by Haygen Warren April 2, 2022 The International Space Station (ISS) and its astronauts had a busy March as teams performed spacewalks, welcomed new crewmembers, said goodbye to those returning to Earth, and prepared for the arrival of the first private mission to the iconic orbital outpost. All the while, groundbreaking science research was being performed using the space station’s many labs and instruments. The International Space Station Expedition 66 crew — consisting of astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Matthias Maurer, and Kayla Barron, and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, joined later in the month by Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov... More (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Apr 7)
AMAZON JOINS ORBITAL REEF COMMERCIAL SPACE STATION PROJECT - Amazon is getting into the private space station business. The company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos has joined the Orbital Reef commercial space station project to provide supply-chain logistics and Amazon Web Services for the private orbital outpost, which is slated to launch by the late 2020s. The Orbital Reef project is led by Blue Origin (another company founded by Bezos) and Sierra Space, and is a partnership with Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering and Arizona State University. More (Source: Space.com - Apr 6)
LAUNCH OF AXIOM’S COMMERCIAL SPACE STATION MISSION DELAYED UNTIL FRIDAY - The launch of the first all-private crew to the International Space Station has been delayed to Friday, officials announced late Monday. The four commercial space fliers will ride to the station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The mission, managed by the Houston company Axiom Space, was originally scheduled for launch in February, but delays in preparing the Crew Dragon spacecraft and schedule constraints with other visiting vehicles at the space station forced officials to move the launch date to late March. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 5)
LOCKHEED MARTIN RELEASES OPEN-SOURCE SATELLITE INTERFACE FOR ON-ORBIT DOCKING - Lockheed Martin on April 4 released the technical specifications of a docking adapter that could be used by manufacturers to make satellites interoperable and easier to update on orbit with new technology. The technical data for the Mission Augmentation Port (MAP) can be used by designers to develop their own docking adapters, said Lockheed Martin. The company used the MAP standard to design its own docking device, called Augmentation System Port Interface (ASPIN). More (Source: SpaceNews - Apr 5)
SATELLITE POLLUTION IS THREATENING TO ALTER OUR VIEW OF THE NIGHT SKY - The night sky has been a source of information and wonder since the dawn of humankind -- and it looks almost the same now as it did then. But the night sky as we know it is on the precipice of changing dramatically due to the proliferation of satellites just a few hundred miles above Earth. "For the first time in human history, we're not going to have access to the night sky in the way that we've seen it," said Samantha Lawler, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Regina in Canada. More (Source: CNN - Apr 5)
PRIVATE MISSION READY FOR LAUNCH TO THE ISS - The first private mission to the International Space Station by an American vehicle is scheduled to launch this week to serve as a first step in one company’s plans to establish a commercial space station. Axiom Space is targeting April 6 for the launch of its Ax-1 mission on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center, with a static-fire test of the Falcon 9 rocket scheduled for April 4. That Crew Dragon spacecraft, Endeavour, will spend 10 days in space, including eight docked to the ISS. There are additional launch opportunities daily through at least April 9. More (Source: SpaceNews - Apr 4)
RUSSIA TO HALT COOPERATION OVER INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Russia says it will end cooperation with western countries over the International Space Station until sanctions are lifted. Russia’s space director said on Saturday that the restoration of normal ties between partners at the ISS and other joint space projects would be possible only once western sanctions against Moscow were lifted. More (Source: The Guardian - Apr 3)
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