Astronaut for Hire

In 1914, the famous Antarctic explorer Shackleton purportedly posted an add to recruit his crew that read: MEN WANTED for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. Nearly 100 years later, the same could be said for the first volunteers to explorer Mars. With conventional propulsion technology, it will take about 8 months of floating in the cold blackness of space just to reach Mars. Dangers like radiation exposure and physiological deconditioning are big uncertainties, as are the pyschological effects of being in close quarters for so long. Addressing these challenges, the European and Russian space agencies launched the ambitious Mars500 Project last June.  Since then, six crewmembers have been locked up in a simulated interplanetary spacecraft pretending to be in transit to the Red Planet. With over 100 scientific experiments on the mission, it's the long...

Reid Stowe Imagine spending 1152 days at sea with no land in site, living off only the provisions you brought with you. That's just what adventurer Reid Stowe did from April 2007 to June 2010 when he drifted the seas in his 70-foot schooner on an expedition called the " Mars Ocean Odyssey " with the bold intention of demonstrating how a small crew could handle the isolation on a trip to Mars. Stowe's record-breaking voyage roughly simulated the duration of an opposition-class mission to Mars, which is the most favored scenario for most Mars mission planners. After 244 days in isolation, the Mars500 crew went into virtual orbit around Mars this week, which signifies the near halfway point of their simulated conjunction-class Mars mission. They will "land" on the surface on February 12 in what is sure to be an exciting event. Both the Stowe and Mars500 missions can teach us a great deal about the psychological factors crews will face when undergo...

As the self-professed " Astronaut Seismologist ," I am very excited by yesterday's NASA announcement confirming that the Moon does indeed have a core.  The news accompanies a report published in the journal Science by Weber et al.   Having just read the paper and its extensive supplemental material, I will devote this post to conveying my initial impressions of the research.  SPACE.com , Science Daily , Science , Discovery News , and Daily Mail had very public-friendly writeups on this story that are worth a look too.  If you prefer to listen, check out this NPR Science Friday interview with Renee Weber: Podcast Powered By Podbean The gist of the paper is that the moon has a solid inner core, a liquid outer core, and a mushy partially molten region above the outer core.  The Earth has all of these same features in its deep interior too.  Scientists have long suspected the Moon to have a core due to indirect evidence such as the co...

After 3 years of hard work, I am proud to report that I completed my M.S. in Space Studies from the School of Aerospace Studies at the University of North Dakota (UND).  The multi-disciplinary program prepares students to become leaders in space exploration and development through a wide-ranging curriculum spanning science, engineering, applications, policy, law, history, business, and management.  As this post's title suggests, I can now call myself a double-master, as I previously earned a M.A. in Earth & Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis . Now, let's take a trip down memory lane [ insert funny time warp sound effect here ]: It was summer of 2007.  Facebook was taking over the world.  The Simpsons was finally available in movie form.  NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft had just made its second fly-by of Venus en route to Mercury, and the Phoenix spacecraft launched toward the Martian north pole.  The Peru earthquake pr...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visits the GCTC. (credit: Alexey Nikolsky-AFP/Getty Images ) The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced today that its director Anatoly Perminov signed the order officially creating the "United Cosmonaut Corps" (UCC).  As a previous press release detailed, the new UCC unites Russia's three separate cosmonaut groups into one at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) in Star City .  Currently, GCTC has 22 cosmonauts, RSC-Energia has 17 cosmonauts, and IBMP has 1 cosmonaut, so the new UCC will have 40 cosmonauts in total. The main purpose of the consolidation is to "enhance cosmonaut selection and training effectiveness and to maintain coordinated national policy in human space missions." This move comes as the latest in a series of re-structuring initiatives in Russia's space program.  On April 2009, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a presidential decree transferring the GCTC to ROSC...

ReelNASA posted an illuminating video with Astronaut Scott Kelly giving viewers a rare peek inside the personal crew quarters on the ISS. I found it interesting that ISS inhabitants can do online banking or shopping from the privacy of their own rooms. Although considerably smaller, the cramped ISS crew quarters remind me of the crew staterooms at MDRS and FMARS . In a previous video tour on the ISS, Kelly shared the stunning panoramic views of Earth from the ISS cupola . In its 10 months of operation, the cupola has quickly become a favorite spot for astronauts to photograph the Earth .

That is the question set before a special blue ribbon panel according to a provocative article appearing in the Orlando Sentinel (and LA Times ) this week, which made the not-so-surprising announcement that, "the White House has called for a 10-month study of the appropriate 'role and size' of the 64-member astronaut corps after the final shuttle mission next year." It was only a matter of time before the bad economy, combined with increasing political pressure to cut government spending, would lead to this question being asked.  After all, with the Space Shuttle's final launches upon us, there are not many opportunities left for NASA astronauts to fly.  According to the article, more than half of the 64 current astronauts are without a scheduled mission. While more than 30 ISS crew slots have not been assigned for missions through 2020, some are questioning whether less expensive "regular" scientists and engineers, rather than those who have underg...