SpaceRef

Shenzhen is a city that holds a special place in my heart. Having spent around six years of my life in Mainland China, around five of them were in the southern metropolis just across the border from Hong Kong. I have countless fond memories of the city, and it played an important role in my developing an understanding of China.

Pittsburgh has long been known as the Steel City after the industry that built it. Over 40 years after the steel hub collapsed, a new one is taking root: space. SUBSCRIBERS ONLY This content is for Website Basic Subscription (Monthly) and Website Basic Subscription (Annual) members only. FIRST MONTH FREE

This week on Multiverse Media’s Space Philosophy podcast, listen to part two of Frank White’s interview with Sara Sabry. Sara Sabry describes her eye-opening flight to space with Blue Origin as a Citizen Astronaut, her new relationship with Earth, and launching the company Deep Space Initiative. Hosted by renowned space philosopher and author Frank White, our bi-weekly podcast features interviews with the greatest minds in the space field.

NASA’s mega-project of scooping up and transferring specimens of Mars to our planet is under intense scrutiny and has been put on pause The plan, which never looked easy, called for a NASA-built Sample Return Lander (SRL) housing a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and a robotic arm provided by the European Space Agency. SUBSCRIBERS ONLY This content is for Website Basic Subscription (Monthly) and Website Basic Subscription (Annual) members only. FIRST MONTH FREE

For humans to survive on long space voyages and settle on other planets, they need to be able to grow their own food. To figure out how to farm in non-Earth environments, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Biological Systems Engineering professors Santosh Pitla and Yufeng Ge have established the Consortium of Space, Policy, Agriculture, Climate and Extreme Environment — SPACE2, for short.

The 6th SpaceNews Icon Awards honor excellence and innovation among space professionals, companies, and organizations during the previous 12 months. Join SpaceNews and industry VIPs for an afternoon celebration of this year’s Icons in the space industry.

NASA is developing a plan to deorbit the International Space Station (ISS) at the end of its lifetime, currently scheduled for 2030. Since the 356-foot-wide laboratory is too big to completely vaporize if left to naturally burn in Earth’s atmosphere, the space agency intends to send a US spacecraft to help deorbit the station and direct its reentry over the unpopulated South Pacific.

A variety of research taking place today on the International Space Station is helping NASA and its partners support crews living and working off the Earth. The ongoing Expedition 70 investigations are informing ways to improve human health and plan future missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Astronauts Loral O’Hara and Satoshi Furukawa joined each other in the Columbus laboratory module for vein scans using the Ultrasound 2 device.

The Quad Cities International Airport in Moline, Michigan is aiming to possibly become one of America’s spaceports. According to an announcement from the Airport’s director, Ben Leischner, they’re beginning the long process to see if they could become an FAA-licensed site for launching orbital rockets, despite not being near coastal water like existing spaceports in Texas, Florida, and California.

The massive rocket that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk positioned as the vehicle that will bring astronauts to the Moon and eventually Mars took flight on Saturday (November 18), approximately seven months after the first launch exploded in what SpaceX then playfully described as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” SUBSCRIBERS ONLY This content is for Website Basic Subscription (Monthly) and Website Basic Subscription (Annual) members only. FIRST MONTH FREE