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Iran launches research satellite “Chamran-1” into Space
14 September 2024 18:51 (UTC+04:00)
Iran has successfully launched its research satellite, Chamran-1, into space on September 14, 2024, according to Azernews.
The Chamran-1, weighing 60 kilograms, was launched at an altitude of 550 kilometers above Earth using the Qaem 100 satellite launcher.
Its mission is to evaluate cold gas motion, navigation, and situation control subsystems in space systems.
The satellite was developed by the Iranian State Electronics Industries Company, in collaboration with the Aerospace Research Institute and local private start-ups.
Notably, this marks the second satellite launch by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), showcasing further advances in the country’s aerospace capabilities.
https://www.azernews.az/region/231245.html
SpaceX Polaris Dawn astronaut plays 'Star Wars' song in music video beamed from space
September 13, 2024
Polaris Dawn astronaut Sarah Gillis, a violinist, released a new music video from space this morning.
Just yesterday (Sept. 12), Gillis was one of two Polaris Dawn astronauts to perform a historic spacewalk, the world's first commercial extravehicular activity, or EVA.
During the one-hour and 46-minute spacewalk, Gillis and Polaris Dawn mission commander and financier Jared Isaacman tested SpaceX's new EVA suits, which the company says will help enable future missions both in orbit around Earth and farther out into space, potentially on the moon or Mars.
Early on Friday (Sept. 13), Gillis and the Polaris Program released the video titled "Harmony of Resilience" on X (formerly Twitter).
"As we travel around our beautiful planet Earth on this five-day mission, we wanted to share this special musical moment with you.
Bringing together global talent, this performance symbolizes unity and hope, highlighting the resilience and potential of children everywhere," Gillis says when introducing the video.
The song in the video, "Rey's Theme," was written by John Williams for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and was performed by Gillis aboard the Polaris Dawn mission's Crew Dragon spacecraft.
In the video, Gillis can be seen playing the song's solo violin part alongside videos of orchestras performing the song in studios and on soundstages.
"Inspired by the universal language of music and the relentless fight against childhood cancers and diseases, this moment was created with the hope of inspiring the next generation to look towards the stars," the Polaris Program wrote on its website.
The video was created in partnership with with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, for whom the Polaris Program is raising money throughout the mission, and El Sistema USA, a program that aims to promote music education "for positive societal impact."
Polaris Dawn launched on Tuesday (Sept. 10) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Polaris Dawn crew consists of mission funder and commander Jared Isaacman; mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both SpaceX engineers; and pilot Scott 'Kidd' Poteet, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force.
During the mission so far, the four private astronauts onboard have conducted a wide range of science experiments to help gather data on how the human body is affected by spaceflight.
https://www.space.com/polaris-dawn-music-video-harmony-of-reslience
https://x.com/PolarisProgram/status/1834557770374296010
Astronauts 3D-print first metal part while on ISS
September 14, 2024
ESA scientists have successfully demonstrated 3D printing of a metal part in space for the first time.
3D printing in space poses challenges, as many methods rely on gravity to position materials during the printing process.
This is because when creating metal structures, molten metal is often used as part of the filament, or printable medium.
In space, its behavior can be unpredictable, which can result in poor-quality objects, as the filament might shift or be placed incorrectly due to the lack of gravitational forces.
Scientists therefore had to adapt to work under these challenging conditions, and the International Space Station provided the perfect setting.
ESA's metal 3D printer uses a stainless steel wire melted by a powerful laser that reaches 2,192°F (1200°C) to create its molten metal filament that gets deposited layer-by-layer to build out a desired shape.
Through painstaking tests carried out over several months, the team was finally able to adjust the printer to its microgravity environment, producing the first metal part in space this August 2024.
The team plans to print two more objects, then all three will be brought back to Earth for quality analysis and future planning.
"With the printing of the first metal 3D shape in space, ESA Exploration teams have achieved a significant milestone in establishing in-orbit manufacturing capabilities.
This accomplishment, made possible by an international and multidisciplinary team, paves the way for long-distance and long-duration missions where creating spare parts, construction components, and tools on demand will be essential," said Daniel Neuenschwander, director of Human and Robotic Exploration at ESA, in a statement.
This groundbreaking technology continues to expand its applications on Earth, revolutionizing fields such as medicine, fashion, art, construction, food production and manufacturing.
In space, as long-duration missions to the moon and potentially Mars take shape, astronauts will need a means of independently repairing or creating tools or parts for machinery or structures that would be difficult to carry onboard a spacecraft, which have limited capacity.
As the technology advances, it may even one day enable the printing of new tissues or organs, enhancing the ability to sustain long-term space exploration—though we're still decades away from this being viable.
3D printers in space are nothing new, as microgravity offers an interesting environment for scientists to conduct experiments, develop better 3D printing materials, or create structures difficult to make on Earth.
However, what's significant about ESA's recent announcement is that this is the first time a 3D printer has successfully produced a metal part.
This capability represents a major milestone as, until this point, metal components for space missions had to be produced on Earth and transported to orbit —a costly and complex part of any mission.
https://www.space.com/astronauts-3d-print-first-metal-part-on-iss
https://www.esa.int/Newsroom/Press_Releases/ESA_3D_prints_first_metal_part_on_the_International_Space_Station
Crew Dragon splashes down to conclude Polaris Dawn mission
September 15, 2024
A Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico early Sept. 15, concluding a five-day private astronaut mission that featured the first commercial spacewalk.
The Crew Dragon capsule Resilience splashed down near Dry Tortugas, in the Gulf of Mexico west of Key West, Florida, at 3:37 a.m. Eastern.
The splashdown location was a new one for SpaceX, which said it selected it after poor weather conditions at other locations off the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida delayed the launch by nearly two weeks.
The splashdown marked the end of the five-day Polaris Dawn mission, the fifth private astronaut mission flown by SpaceX.
“Polaris Dawn, we are mission complete,” Jared Isaacman, commander of the mission, said moments after splashdown.
The Polaris Dawn mission was commanded by Isaacman, the billionaire founder and funder of the Polaris program who also led the Inspiration4 private astronaut mission launched on another Crew Dragon three years ago.
Kidd Poteet, a former Air Force pilot, was the mission’s pilot. Two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, were mission specialists.
A Falcon 9 launched the Crew Dragon spacecraft into an elliptical orbit Sept. 10, initially placing it into an orbit of about 190 by 1,200 kilometers.
Dragon raised its orbit later in the first day of the mission, reaching an apogee of 1,408.1 kilometers, according to SpaceX.
That marked the highest altitude on a crewed Earth orbital mission and the highest altitude by any crewed mission since the Apollo 17 mission to the moon in 1972.
Dragon lowered its apogee to about 720 kilometers after about six orbits.
The highlight of the mission was the first commercial spacewalk, which took place on Sept. 12.
All four crewmembers wore SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity (EVA) suits as the cabin was depressurized.
Isaacman and Gillis briefly exited the hatch in the nose of the Dragon spacecraft in a “standup” spacewalk, testing the performance of the suits.
After the spacewalk the crew devoted their time to nearly 40 experiments, focusing on the effects of the space environment on the human body and tests of equipment that could be used to collect such data.
The mission also tested communications with the ground through SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation, using laser intersatellite links.
Those tests included a broadcast of Gillis playing the violin while in orbit as well as a live downlink with SpaceX employees.
Neither Polaris nor SpaceX provided many technical details about those Starlink tests, although SpaceX said the discussion with employees lasted for more than 40 minutes and was uninterrupted even as Dragon’s Draco thrusters performed 16 burns.
https://spacenews.com/crew-dragon-splashes-down-to-conclude-polaris-dawn-mission/
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=polarisdawn
New York State Resident Sees “Six Triangular Shaped Craft” That Flew in “Unnatural Pattern”
September 12, 2024
With cooler nights, more residents across New York will be spending more time outdoors at dusk enjoying nature.
Many sky watchers on their nightly walks may see astronomical wonders such as a Full Moon, the Aurora Borealis, or the latest annual meteor shower.
But more than a few residents in the state claim they're seeing something else in the skies that they can not explain.
Is this latest odd sighting in Wayne County, New York just weather balloons, or perhaps a military exercise of some kind?
Or maybe something really bizarre that defies any and all explanation?
New York state has seen another busy year for sightings of alleged discs, orbs, and other unexplained airborne objects, One such report even claimed they witnessed an actual human abduction by an unidentified craft in May 2024, though there is absolutely no credible basis to this claim.
One of the latest filings to the National Unidentified Flying Object Reporting Center comes from a resident who says they witnessed "at least six triangular shaped craft changing color and shape flying in a very unnatural pattern."
The encounter would last for about 30 minutes, according to the report.
The alleged encounter happened August 11, in what the person says was a "heavily wooded area", on the "outskirts of [sic[ the village, along the county line."
The resident said they had their dog out that early that morning, when they noticed the first object moving east.
After bringing their dog indoors, the person said they came back outside with their phone to record what was now at six objects.
They further described the objects as having an "aura or haze", that also left a trail and even emitted other objects and "beams"
The resident claimed they saw the flying objects continuously change colors, with "two of them expanded into a globe shape and then into a ring, and then immediately back into seemingly solid object."
https://wpdh.com/ufo-weird-uap-meteor-object-orb-new-york-state-alines-et-ny-military-craft-balloon-drone-witness/
https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=182600
Bombshell UFO hearings to take place in Congress as new footage emerges of 'huge' craft near US nuclear weapons base
Updated: 13:09 EDT, 15 September 2024
Another round of public UFO hearings are in store for Congress within mere weeks, according to a senior member of the Senate's Armed Services Committee.
The new Senate hearing, which could arrive as early as September, follows another bizarre summer of US military whistleblower claims about these baffling airborne mysteries — including ex-Pentagon official Luis Elizondo's revelations that he personally handled an 'alien' implant removed from a veteran servicemember.
New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who confirmed the hearing, said: 'It's a priority for me because I think it's very important we continue to make things publicly available.'
The Capitol Hill inquiry also comes as many American civilians have also reported their own UFO sightings, which Sen. Gillibrand said she hopes will soon be added to the investigative purview of the Pentagon's only one-year-old UFO hunting office.
Just days ago, in fact, witnesses taped what one called a 'huge' UFO with 'tons of blinking and spinning lights' 60 miles from a US Air Force nuclear weapons base.
That sighting — filmed from Choteau Montana and hour's drive northwest of storied UFO hotspot Malmstrom Air Force Base — left one witness 'shaking and crying from the experience,' according to her husband, who posted the encounter to Reddit.
'The photos aren't scary,' the anonymous poster noted, 'but seeing what you truly believe to be a massive object in the silent night sky going over YOUR head and home carries a lot more emotional weight in person.'
The UFO, which can mostly be seen by 'a rotating orange/red light on the bottom' after it shifted from appearing like a long, gleaming white streak, was not one of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite trains commonly mistaken for alien craft, the witness said.
'I'm familiar with Starlink videos,' he emphasized. 'While we were watching the object it was very apparent that the lights were around the silhouette of a large craft.'
'You could not "see between the lights,"' as he explained the encounter to the r/UFOs subreddit. 'It was solid dark behind them. Our take is that we were seeing a disc shape from the side.'
Sen. Gillibrand expressed her hope Monday that the upcoming Senate UFO hearing would renew public trust in the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and encourage the public to report their own sightings to AARO's UFO hunters.
'We also want to try to continue to build credibility within this office [AARO] so more of the public can feed in sightings and have a place and a platform to send information and inquiries,' she said, 'because that's eventually what this office is supposed to do.'
After a rocky first year, in which AARO's inaugural director Dr Sean Kirkpatrick sparred in public with ex-US intelligence whistleblower David Grusch and others over an alleged UFO cover-up, the office spent most of 2024 guided by only temporary acting leadership.
That changed late last August when the Pentagon announced that AARO's new lead would be an expert in quantum optics and crypto-mathematics from the National Security Agency (NSA): Dr. Jon T. Kosloski.
'I'm hoping that the new head will be the one to testify,' Sen. Gillibrand told Capitol Hill reporter Matt Laslo, who runs the newsletter Ask a Pol.
Gillibrand, whose fellow New York legislator Sen. Chuck Schumer has sponsored a detailed amendment pushing to declassify UFO files, gave a preview of the hearing.
The Armed Services Committee, she said, would host 'a progress report on how many unidentified aerial phenomena we've assessed and analyzed, give examples of what we have identified and give examples of what we haven't identified.'
This kind of public disclosure was a key goal, according to Sen. Gillibrand, 'so that the community can be kept up to speed about what we're actually doing and what this office [i.e. AARO] is doing.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13835247/ufo-hearings-congress-footage-nuclear-weapons-base.html
https://www.askapol.com/p/gillibrand-says-public-uap-hearing-scheduled-in-senate
Michael Salla
@MichaelSalla
Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet will testify before the House Oversight Committed on UAP/UFOs in November. Will be interesting to see if he shares any first hand info Underwater UAPs (aka USOs) or just repeats what's available in open source literature about historical USO sightings as he's done in past interviews. Given the high expectations after last year's UAP hearing with David Grusch, having a distinguished Admiral talk about historical cases and the importance of UAP disclosure isn't going to break new ground. More whistleblowers are needed who actually disclose what's happening, rather than highly credentialed individuals advocating disclosure.
8:50 AM Sep 14, 2024
https://x.com/MichaelSalla/status/1834982953748734148
https://x.com/GallaudetTim