Lifeboat Foundation

As the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrives at its target asteroid Bennu, scientists on the ground prepare for a new bounty of planetary samples.

WATCH LIVE: NASA’s Osiris-REx spacecraft is expected to arrive at a 1,640-foot wide, carbon-rich asteroid named Bennu to collect and return samples in hopes of learning more about the origins of life on Earth and perhaps elsewhere in the solar system.

Twenty-five years ago today, a group of astronauts ascended in the space shuttle to accomplish a feat of unprecedented proportions: to fix NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, in space. Learn how the ingenuity of those repairs blazed the way for decades of not only satellite repairs, but also space exploration: https://go.nasa.gov/2FWHuXz&h=AT1qFoI48_v6tgpXkkQf7uBHIj2Xuh…jlZErelV8A

Reusable rockets to be used?

Comment with your questions regarding NASA below! 🚀🛰.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine reflects on the former president’s contributions to our space program by saying, “The President noted it was humanity’s destiny to explore, and America’s destiny to lead. We salute this great American leader, who challenged us to chart a course for the future to benefit all humanity.”

To get to the Moon, Mars and beyond: we’re going to need a bigger boat. NASA’s Space Launch System will be the largest rocket ever assembled. So how do you build a rocket of unprecedented size? Find out: https://go.nasa.gov/2reryWv&h=AT1kQENIbN8mgnEjOtOB961e5lWIk9…o6EX1Flehg

NASA astronaut Anne McClain is expected to take her first spaceflight aboard Soyuz, as every U.S. astronaut has done since 2011 — but she may be one of the last.

The first stage foresees the launch of a module to orbit the moon, the RBC news website reported, citing Nikolai Sevastyanov, the head of Russia’s TsNIIMash federal rocket and spaceсraft development corporation.

The second phase will reportedly involve sending the country’s first manned mission to the moon and starting construction of a long-term base between 2025 and 2034. The program’s third stage envisions the completion of the base’s construction by 2040 and the establishment of an “integrated manned moon exploration system.”

Construction of the moon colony is set to begin late in 2025, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited Yevgeny Mikrin, Russia’s chief designer of manned space programs, as saying during a presentation of the draft lunar program on Wednesday.

Continue reading “Russia Announces Plans to Establish Moon Colony by 2040” »

Proxima b, our nearest neighboring exoplanet, is almost 25 trillion miles away. Even one of our fastest spaceships—the 31,600-mile-per-hour New Horizons—would take hundreds of thousands of years to get there. Assuming we can’t figure out how to warp space-time (seems unlikely, but fingers crossed), we’re still looking at a couple-hundred-year trip in the best-case scenario, which leads to the real problem: No human crew could survive the entire ride. Science-fiction writers have long floated so-called generation ships as a solution. Designers would outfit these interplanetary cruise vessels to support a community of adults and their children, and their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children…until humanity finally reaches a new celestial shore. Here’s our best guess for what it would take to sow the seeds of an extrasolar species.

Career planning

Successive generations need to fill all the vital crew roles—such as medics and mechanics—which doesn’t leave much room for freedom of choice. A version of modern career tests would assign occupations based on aptitude, passions, and available jobs.

Continue reading “We could move to another planet with a spaceship like this” »