Science & Technology
NASA Offers Virtual Activities for 31st SpaceX Resupply Mission

NASA Space Technology

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NASA invites the public to participate in virtual activities ahead of the launch of SpaceXs 31st commercial resupply services mission for the agency. NASA and SpaceX are targeting 9:29 p.m. EST Monday, Nov. 4, for the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to launch on the companys Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

In addition to food, supplies, and equipment for the crew, Dragon will deliver several new experiments, including the COronal Diagnostic EXperiment to examine solar wind and how it forms, as well as Antarctic moss to observe the combined effects of cosmic radiation and microgravity on plants. Other investigations aboard include a device to test cold welding of metals in microgravity and an investigation that studies how space impacts different materials

Members of the public can register to attend the launch virtually. As a virtual guest, youll gain access to curated resources, interactive opportunities, and mission-specific information delivered straight to your inbox. Following liftoff, virtual guests will receive a commemorative stamp for their virtual guest passport

Learn more about NASA research and activities on the International Space Station at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

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Creating a golden streak in the night sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars upward after liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 14, 2023, on the companys 27th Commercial Resupply Services mission for the agency to the International Space Station.SpaceX

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Science & Technology
KNUST TCC offers support for commercialization of research findings

Technology tamfitronics

The KNUST Technology Consultancy Centre (TCC) is set to provide support for transforming research findings into products.

Director-General of the TCC, Professor Francis Davis, believes the move is an avenue for wealth creation.

“TCC has the capacity to transition research findings into products,” he said. “We believe that what comes out of our research labs, centers of excellence, and universities should become multi-billion-dollar companies in the shortest possible time. Let us collaborate.”

He made this statement at the closing ceremony of the Calestous Juma Executive Dialogue held at KNUST.

Director of Strategy at African UnionDevelopment Agency – New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD), Mr. Mohamad Abdisalam, encouraged the various institutions to foster collaborations that will provide solutions to the problems that have been raised.

“All the problems we have discussed here today, the solution is in our hands,” he said. “It is not in the political office, the parliament, the legal sector, or even the private sector. We are demonstrators of Africa’s brainpower in innovations, so let us take it up and do our own share. We can put together a proper proposal, a solid partnership, a solid platform, a consortium, and come in with the reliability of the Africa Academy of Science, NEPAD, Michigan State, and all the institutions represented here today. Nothing is impossible for us to achieve.”

Director of International Programs for the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University, Professor Kareem Maredia, expressed his gratitude to the host university for their hospitality and the participation of students in the dialogue. He encouraged the organizers to involve other African countries and institutions in their subsequent gatherings.

Top Stories
Collimate offers tool to predict downlink success

Top Stories Tamfitronics

Collimate Space (left to right) CEO Guillermo Jenaro and chief technology officer Anthony Xiao. Credit: Collimate Space

SAN FRANCISCO – Collimate Space, a new Silicon Valley startup, aims to tackle a specific problem for satellite operators.

Collimate offers a tool for predicting the success of satellite downlinks, after considering space weather, terrestrial weather and the location and profile of ground-based antennas.

That’s valuable because satellite operators can say to a customer, ‘I can get you the data with 90-percent confidence,’” Guillermo Jenaro, Collimate co-founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. “It gives you more precision in your prediction. This will empower our customers to say yes to customers they could not assist before.”

In addition, once satellite operators understand the probability of success for various downlinks, they can “reverse-engineer” their operations to improve the odds of success, Jenaro said. “Maybe it’s going to require that you start sending data earlier or have two ground stations in your scheduling system.”

Jenaro, who spent about 20 years working for Airbus in Spain, France, Germany and the United States, founded Collimate with Anthony Xiao, former Slingshot Aerospace engineering vice president. The two met when Xiao was the director of engineering for Acubed, Airbus’ Silicon Valley innovation center and Jenaro was an Acubed project executive.

In addition to the scheduling product, Collimate executives see long-term potential in building a variety of atomic services for satellite operators.

“Whenever we design anything, we make sure that you can plug it in with any interface you use,” Jenaro said. “We have a unique approach to this informed by having been at the customer side operating large, complex aerospace products and understanding the ecosystem.”

Artificial Intelligence

Collimate uses deep learning “to take what has historically happened, fuse it across lots of data and anticipate future events,” Jenaro said. “This can apply to scheduled communication, or avoiding jamming and space weather interference.”

In the years ahead, Collimate will use artificial intelligence to create “optimized” communications planning for space operators, Jenaro said. “In the future, there will be several layers of AI throughout the tech stack and chat interfaces might be powered by” large language models.

Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews based in San Francisco.Debra earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. She…More by Debra Werner

Science & Technology
Rocket Lab offers ‘heartbroken’ students tour after Nasa trip abruptly cancelled

NASA Space Technology

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NASA Space Technology Rocket Lab production floor in Auckland.

Rocket Lab has 500 rocket scientists and engineers, and a big mission control at its Auckland facility. Photo: Supplied / Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab is stepping in to fill the vacuum that more than a dozen students find themselves in after their space camp dreams came crashing down.

It is offering the students a tour of its rocket factory and mission control in Auckland after a company organising to send the students to a US space camp collapsed.

Actura charged up to $13,000 for children from 25 New Zealand schools to attend a two-week CASE Space School Program at the Nasa headquarters in Houston, Texas. But parents were left dumbfounded after an email saying the trip would not go ahead.

Rocket Lab has now offered to help.

It had about a dozen rockets being worked on at any given time at its Mount Wellington factory, spokesperson Morgan Connaughton told Morning Report.

There are also about 500 rocket scientists and engineers, and a big mission control.

“It’s not quite Houston, but maybe it’s even better because it’s at home,” Connaughton said.

Rocket Lab was talking to partners to help students from outside of Auckland get to the facility, she said.

“If we can, we’d like to get everyone up here.

“We would love to run our own space camps. The trouble is, we’ve got our hands full with just core business at the moment: launching rockets and building spacecraft.”

NASA Space Technology Rocket Lab mission control in Auckland

Rocket Lab mission control in Auckland. Photo: Supplied / Rocket Lab

She had not heard of Actura, but said space camps were not a novel idea and many companies organised trips to Nasa.

Rocket Lab’s offer comes as many others in the community are also reaching out to help the “heartbroken” students.

What went wrong

Mike Renata’s daughter, an intermediate student, was all set to leave in three weeks.

“We started the payments last year in April, we had our last one in January,” Renata told Morning Report.

“From January to now, they sent our flight itineraries, what the kids are going to be doing and we had a Zoom [call] with them at the end of May, and they hyped the kids up and we were all excited, And then just out of nowhere, we get that email.”

“We got an email saying that they’re going to liquidation.”

The email came past midnight, but Renata was awake and as soon as he tried replied he said he “got a bounce back email saying, ’email shut down'”.

He said the parents had “no idea” what was going on with Actura, and they felt “left out of the loop”.

The company had done such camps with schools in Australia and New Zealand before, he said, so they thought it was “legit”.

The students were “heartbroken”, Renata said.

“A lot of the girls put a lot of time and effort into this. For our family, we had to do a lot of fundraising and a lot of events. So there’s a lot of time spent, a lot of community involvement.

“She [my daughter] is absolutely gutted.”

He said his daughter had always been fascinated by space and planets, so when the opportunity arose, he jumped on it.

But not before long “it all came crashing down”, Renata said.

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