Crew Dragon Mated To Falcon 9!

Two astronauts asleep on Challenger’s middeck, August 9th 1983 ‘On Challenger’s middeck, Commander Richard “Dick” Truly and Mission Specialist (MS) Guion Bluford sleep in front of forward lockers and port side wall. Truly sleeps with his head at the ceiling and his feet to the floor. Bluford, wearing sleep mask (blindfold), is oriented with the top of his head at the floor and his feet on the ceiling.’

Credit to the NASA Archives.

An Astronaut’s Tips For Living in Confined Spaces

One thing astronauts have to be good at: living in confined spaces for long periods of time. 

Nearly 20 years successfully living on the International Space Station and more than 50 flying in space did not happen by accident. Our astronauts and psychologists have examined what human behaviors create a healthy culture for living and working remotely in small groups. They narrowed it to five general skills and defined the associated behaviors for each skill. 

For many of us in a similar scenario, here are the skills as shared by astronaut Anne McClain: 

Skill 1, Communication

Share information and feelings freely. 

Talk about your intentions before taking action. 

Discuss when your or others’ actions were not as expected. 

Take time to debrief after success or conflict. 

Admit when you are wrong.

Skill 2, Self-Care

Balance work, rest, and personal time. Be organized.

Realistically assess your own strengths and weaknesses, and their influence on the group.

Identify personal tendencies and their influence on your success or failure. Learn from mistakes. 

Be open about your weaknesses and feelings. 

Take action to mitigate your own stress or negativity (don’t pass it on to the group). 

Skill 3, Team Care

Demonstrate patience and respect. Encourage others. 

Monitor your team (or friends and family) for signs of stress or fatigue. 

Encourage participation in team (or virtual) activities. 

Volunteer for the unpleasant tasks. Offer and accept help. 

Share credit; take the blame.

Skill 4, Group Living

Cooperate rather than compete. 

Actively cultivate group culture (use each individual’s culture to build the whole). 

Respect roles, responsibilities and workload. 

Take accountability; give praise freely. Then work to ensure a positive team attitude. 

Keep calm in conflict.

Skill 5, Leadership/Followership

Accept responsibility.

Adjust your style to your environment.

Assign tasks and set goals.

Lead by example. Give direction, information, feedback, coaching and encouragement.

Talk when something isn’t right. Ask questions.

We are all in this together on this spaceship we call Earth! These five skills are just reminders to help cultivate good mental and physical health while we all adjust to being indoors. Take care of yourself and dive deeper into these skills HERE. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

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ariane yeong

Signalis is such a good game. It's so melancholy and dreamlike. It's like one of those really sad dreams that makes you cry when you wake up 😭

Can't wait to see Rocketlab recovering first stages! They are made of carbon fibre so they should be a bit more heat resistant than aluminium?

Flight 10 is scheduled for 25 November!

Flight 10 will use S-band telemetry and onboard flight computers to gather data for future first stage recovery.

The first stage will also use a new reaction control system for guided re-entry.

this too shall past (to reveal to you an appreciation for things you never knew)

The Long Gas Tail of Spiral Galaxy D100 : Why is there long red streak attached to this galaxy? The streak is made mostly of glowing hydrogen that has been systematically stripped away as the galaxy moved through the ambient hot gas in a cluster of galaxies. Specifically, the galaxy is spiral galaxy D100, and cluster is the Coma Cluster of galaxies. The red path connects to the center of D100 because the outer gas, gravitationally held less strongly, has already been stripped away by ram pressure. The extended gas tail is about 200,000 light-years long, contains about 400,000 times the mass of our Sun, and stars are forming within it. Galaxy D99, visible to D100’s lower left, appears red because it glows primarily from the light of old red stars – young blue stars can no longer form because D99 has been stripped of its star-forming gas. The featured false-color picture is a digitally enhanced composite of images from Earth-orbiting Hubble and the ground-based Subaru telescope. Studying remarkable systems like this bolsters our understanding of how galaxies evolve in clusters. via NASA

Wait, two days? This happened on the 2nd of March 2019. https://youtu.be/2ZL0tbOZYhE

SpaceX Demo-1: ‘Go’ for Launch : Two days remain until the planned liftoff of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket—the first launch of a commercially built and operated American spacecraft and space system designed for humans. (via NASA)

Space looks very different to how film and television might show. Lots of sci-fi shows or movies portray the stars and galaxy behind a planet, and while it can look pretty, it also is very unrealistic. Stars are very dim. The galaxy is even dimmer. Anybody that lives in a light-pollluted area knows these things. Sunlight, and the light from it that shines onto the planets, is very very bright. This is why you can’t see stars during the day time. You can turn the exposure of your camera up to see both the planet and the stars, but then the planet becomes blindingly bright, and you get lots of camera glare.

Images taken using Space Engine 0.990.37.1720

Unrelated spiritual stuff below

This post probably sounds like nitpicking, and I guess it is. I’m not sure if I like the spirit of space being tampered with just to make things look better in a blockbuster movie. I believe the darkness and quietness is what contains the energy of space, and that feature of it is sacred. Space to me is an ocean, and filling space with clouds/nebulae and planets in a fictional setting feels a lot like completely filling the oceans with seaweed and sand. Planets are extremely far apart, and that is a blessing, as otherwise they would collide with each other. I don’t really have any personal grudges on people that exaggerate space for visual or story related reasons, I think it’s more of a cultural issue, and one that will be resolved over enough time as life on Earth begins to wander into space.