In the next decade, NASA is promising to send men and women back to the moon. Plus, there are international plans to start assembling a platform near the moon, called Deep Space Gateway, from which to set forth on missions to Mars or elsewhere in the solar system.
Already, NASA is testing ways to make it easier for astronauts to grow some of their food during the long trips. The Gilroy Astrobotany Lab at the UW-Madison is playing a key role in that effort, with tests on the International Space Station on adaptable plants like Arabidopsis. That's a small, flowering plant that's related to cabbage and mustard.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Firms to run with government space tech like GPS
The space industry is long overdue in its shift toward commercialization, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson told CNBC on Monday.
"This should have happened decades ago," Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History, said on "Squawk Box."
"When we think of space, we think of NASA," but the government agency is "only a small fraction" of what's going on in space, said Tyson, who likes to comment on all things science on social media and television.
Why Elon Musk's SpaceX Is Launching Cannabis and Coffee to Space in 2020 | Inc.com
In a planned flight in March, SpaceX will be bringing cargo to the ISS . In addition to its regular payload , the cargo will also include hemp and coffee, Newsweek reports, after talking to the companies behind the decision. According to the report, Front Range Biosciences is partnering with SpaceCells USA and BioServe Space Technologies to determine whether space travel and the environment in space in any way genetically mutate the plants.
New Avenue 5 Trailer and Josh Gad Space Tourism Parody Video
HBO has released a couple new teasers for Avenue 5 , which stars Hugh Laurie as Ryan Clark, the captain of a space cruise ship called the Avenue 5 that encounters some trouble while carousing about in the solar system. The first one, which you can watch above, is a promo video hosted by billionaire Herman Judd (Gad)—channeling some serious Douglas Reynholm "Spaceology" vibes—promising the future of space tourism. At least, it'll happen at some point: He's not super specific on the details.
Not to change the topic here:
A Former NASA Astronaut Is Building a Plasma-Powered Mars Rocket
Space agencies are locked in a hotly-contested race to send a crew to Mars, with NASA and SpaceX both working on vehicles to reach the Red Planet.
But it may be a third group, Ad Astra — no relation to the Brad Pitt movie — that pulls ahead, thanks to the plasma rocket technology it's working on, according to CBC . If it pans out, the plasma engine would enable a larger crew to reach Mars in a third of the time it would take a conventional rocket, utterly changing the landscape of space travel.
Trending in Travel: Space Selfies, Record-Breaking Cruises, $274 Flights To Paris, And More!
This week, we’re celebrating nonstop flights to Cape Town, taking selfies to the next level and dreaming of an island escape to St. Thomas. Check out our weekly round-up of what’s trending in travel right now.
SAC museum "blasts off" with temporary space exhibit - Gateway
Historically, space has been considered the final frontier of human exploration. A new exhibit at the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum helps to shed some light on the future of space exploration by NASA.
"SPACE: A New Generation" is a temporary exhibit that aims to educate people about the future of space exploration and what NASA has planned in the coming decades.
Scientists Are Contemplating a 1,000-Year Space Mission to Save Humanity
The biggest challenge is getting there. Proxima b is almost unimaginably far away. There is a program underway, Breakthrough Starshot , to send a probe to Alpha Centauri with a journey time of just 20 years, but the entire craft will weigh only a few grams, being propelled by a 100-billion-watt laser fired at it from Earth rather than carrying any of its own fuel or, for that matter, human passengers.
This means that no one cohort of crew members would be able to survive the journey from start to finish, so those on the craft for the launch would have to pass on the torch to the next generation, and the next, and the next, and the next.
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