astronaut

private astronaut Jared Isaacman will be its new director

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Space has once again been a question of power, and NASA is once again at the center of the spotlight. While China officially maintains that will reach the Moon with astronauts in 2030 and lists concrete advances in its manned program, the United States faces a replacement at the head of its space agency after a turbulent year. It is not a simple name change in the organizational chart: it is the confirmation that the lunar race has entered a phase in which leadership, the calendar and today’s decisions weigh a lot. The United States Senate just confirmed to Jared Isaacman as NASA’s new administrator, ending a long and unusual process even by Washington standards. The vote went ahead with 67 votes in favor against 30 votes against, according to C-SPAN, and clears up an uncertainty that had weighed on the agency’s management for months. With this confirmation, NASA leaves behind a stage marked by interim management and once again has a ratified manager. New command at NASA and a lunar race that once again sets the course Jared Isaacman doesn’t fit the traditional mold of NASA administrators. Founder of payments company Shift4, private pilot and astronauthis name became known for commanding two commercial manned missions aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Inspiration4 in 2021 and Polaris Dawn in 2024. This journey, halfway between the private sector and direct experience in flight, explains why its arrival is interpreted as a sign of continuity in the agency’s growing openness to commercial actors. The process started more than a year ago, when Donald Trump announced his intention to place him at the head of NASAbut it was interrupted on May 31, cwhen the White House withdrew his nomination. Months later, with meetings between the two and in a context of growing frustration within the administration over the performance of the acting administrator, according to industry sources cited by SpaceNews, Trump announced on November 4 his decision to re-nominate him. Jared Isaacman All this comes as China reaffirms its goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2030 and listed a chain of tests already carried out and others in preparation. The program includes tests of the Lanyue module, validations of the Long March-10 rocket and the Mengzhou spacecraft, in addition to the development of extravehicular suits and a manned lunar rover, within a schedule that the organization itself describes as demanding. Space Launch System From Washington, this Chinese advance has been translated into an increasingly explicit message. Sean Duffy, Secretary of Transportation and acting administrator of NASA during the interim period, publicly congratulated Isaacman upon his confirmation and framed his arrival as part of a clear political objective. “I wish Jared success as he begins his tenure and leads NASA as we return to the Moon in 2028 and defeat China,” he wrote in a post. In his appearance before the Senate, Isaacman made it clear that the lunar calendar is not a secondary issue for NASA. Given doubts about the accumulated delays in the Artemis program, he warned that any additional delay could have strategic consequences. “There is no doubt that the top priority in the short term is returning American astronauts to the Moon,” statedemphasizing that postponing that objective opens the door for the United States to lose the initiative. Images | NASA | SpaceX In Xataka | We have filled the Earth’s orbit with satellites. And now the risk of a catastrophic collision is very high

He cheated the whole world, posing as Astronaut for years. I had no driving license

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“With you, Captain Robert J. Hunt, the youngest astronaut in the United States.” Applause. A man with NASA’s blue monkey took the stage and, for more than two hours, captivated the audience with his stories of secret missions aboard ATLANTIS SPACE FREE NASA. At one point he took two blackened collapse and said they had stayed like this during the atmospheric reentry of one of his trips to space. Years of lies. It was January 1989. His two -hour talk at the Boston experimental aircraft association would be the last after years of being entertained by politicians and all kinds of institutions. It had been passed by NASA’s Combat Pilot and Astronaut without anyone being discovered its complex network of lies. Until, days after that last talk, he broke hearts and ended up imprisoned. The origin of a fake. Robert Hunt’s obsession for space began at age seven, seeing Apollo’s moon landing 11. His father shared a similar fascination, but for military life. He was a plumber who called himself “Colonel Hunt”, although he would never have been in the army. With 14, Robert began in another of his specialties: the art of deception. At that age he sold yellow -painted sparrows to a neighbor telling him that they were canaries. After the institute, he enlisted the Navy, but was expelled after a psychological evaluation after only two months. Disappointed, decided to “continue the dream” on his own, according to The journalist Jeff Maysh recounts. He began to sneak into military bases and live his fantasies. On one occasion, he was caught by groking near the Air Force Two, the plane of the then vice president George Hw Bush, which triggered an FBI investigation. Creating Captain Hunt. In the 80s, Hunt married several times, presenting himself as a university graduate, professional baseball player and inventor of a spray diaper cream called “Love My Baby”, supposedly about to be bought by Johnson & Johnson for 2.5 million dollars. The secret ingredient, according to him, was “shark oil.” The jump to fame came when he decided to become a national hero. He falsified documents and a career as a Navy helicopter pilot was invented. Then, he bought Astronaut wings for $ 20 and proclaimed himself “the youngest astronaut in the United States.” His plan was to go to space. Robert Hunt had no pilot license or driving license, but the “Captain Hunt” had flown a F/A-18 Hornet in Libya and had formed as an astronaut at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. His goal, he confessed later, was to become the first imposter in space: make the lie so great that it ended up being reality. In December 1988, the farce reached its peak during a trip to Ireland. After impressing Aer Lingus crew with his credentials, he was invited to the cabin. When landing in Dublin, it was received by officials of the Irish government. “I didn’t even have to go through customs,” he says. “They had a small band there, playing the national anthem.” He later took the tea with the mayor and received the Irish Honorary citizenship. The fall of the imposter. People realized that Captain Hunt was not in his bockals, but the castle of cards did not collapse until a policeman named Andrew Palombo related two strange complaints. On the one hand, American Express had blocked a 4,000 -dollar charge for a private jet on the Ann Sweeney credit card, an engineer who worked in Polaroid. On the other hand, a family had denounced that a man disguised as an astronaut had convinced his 18 -year -old son to enlist the Navy and then demanded $ 4,000 to cancel the enlistment using his “connections in the Pentagon.” Palombo, a decorated agent, investigated those complaints and uncovered a surprising history of deceptions. “It was like seeing him die.” On January 28, 1989, agent Andrew Palombo knocked on Robert Hunt’s door and found military paraphernalia, flight monkeys, a NASA helmet and Korean war medals, a conflict that occurred before Hunt was born. The celebrities Space Transfording Tastestesses They turned out to be burned soil tiles. Hunt declared himself guilty of theft for using his wife’s card and scams the family of the child recruit. His wife, the optical engineer Ann Sweeney, had believed all his lies. He said that discovering it was “how to see someone die.” “This guy has passed NASA Astronaut, Marina’s Combat Pilot, Cambridge Police and God knows what else,” the Palombo agent told the press. A repeat scammer. Far from reforming, Hunt did not waste time. As soon as he left prison, he announced his candidacy for mayor of Revere, Massachusetts. “I know power and how to move in it,” he told the press. After not paying the restitution to his victims, he became a fugitive of the law. His next appearance was in San Francisco. He appeared at a military base as head of the Seal Team Six, the Navy’s anti -terrorism elite. He slept in the officers of the officers and worked for three weeks at the emergency operations center. His fall was almost comic: the FBI stopped him after he parked in the reserved square of a general. Today, Robert Hunt is 63 years old and lives in New Hampshire, working on construction. Images | NASA, Susan Lapides In Xataka | Dr Love, the teenager who pretended to be a gynecologist (and other recent and great impostors)

NASA has revealed why no astronaut has left the Earth’s atmosphere. Not even when they went to the moon

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From time to time, NASA reminds us with some anecdote or study that things are never how they seem or, failing that, that can always be questionable or have more than one answer. Recently they gave us such a simple explanation about our inability to find extraterrestrial signs that scared. They also clarified why We hadn’t returned To the moon before. The latest: remember that, technically, no human has ever left the earth’s atmosphere. And yes, I don’t even want when we went to the moon. A technically true provocation. To say that no astronaut in history has ever left the earth’s atmosphere may sound to a joke or little less than a conspiracy theory, but, from a scientific perspective and following what atmospheric models say, it is more than us A correct statement. To place ourselves in perspective and following this line of explanation, even iconic figures Like Yuri Gagarin either Neil Armstrongor contemporary space travelers Like William Shatnerhave remained, in physical terms, within the most extreme (although diffuse) limits of the Earth’s atmosphere. The key lies in how the end of that atmosphere is defined: a more complex and expansive issue of what is commonly believed. The atmosphere does not end where we imagine. All this reasoned recently Doug RowlandNASA heliophysics expert. Contrary to the popular idea that the atmosphere ends in a finite layer that dissipates before reaching the terrestrial orbit, the reality is that the atmosphere does not have a clearly defined “roof”. On the contrary, it becomes progressively more dim, but continues to spread. As Rowland toldeven hundreds of kilometers on the surface, where the International Space Station (EEI) orbits, there is still a sufficient air density to gradually stop the station. In fact, if it were not periodically driven with rockets, the EEI would end up falling by atmospheric drag. The artificial border: Kárman. For practical reasons (such as spatial treaties or legal definitions) an international convention has been adopted: The karm linelocated 100 kilometers above sea level, which marks the point where the space begins theoretically. This line serves as a technical threshold, since 99,99997% of atmospheric mass terrestrial is below. Said that, and how Explain the space agency itselfthis definition is useful for regulations and classifications, not so much to describe with physical precision the real limits of the atmosphere. The geocorone: atmosphere that reaches the moon. In 2019, A study based on data from Soho Solar Observatory (NASA/ESA), revealed that the exosphere of the Earth (specifically, a diffuse cloud of known hydrogen atoms Like geocorone) extends to about 629,000 kilometers, that is, beyond the orbit of the moon. What happens? That on that limit there are still about 0.2 hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter. That means that, technically, even the Apollo missions that alunizarized in the 60s and 70s did not abandon the earth’s atmosphere. “The moon flies through the Earth’s atmosphere,” Igor Baliukin came to saymain author of the study, referring to the unsuspected magnitude of this invisible layer. The sun also contains us. The thing is even more complicated when both the Earth and the Moon are Inside the solar atmosphere. This extends to the edge of the helosphere, the limit beyond which the interstellar space begins. At this point it must be remembered that between the atmosphere of the earth and that of the sun there is no emptiness, but a structure of progressive and overlapping layers that contain particles, energy and electromagnetic dynamics. Therefore, and seen thus, the concept of “being in space” is less a matter of abrupt border and more a matter of progressive gradient. So where the space begins? As Rowland explainedthe answer depends on the point of view. If you ask where the atmosphere ends in a practical sense, probably about 400 kilometers, where air density ceases to have significant effect on objects. But from a more rigorous scientific perspective, that atmosphere does not disappear: it only dissipates and dilutes to barely measurable extremes, without disappearing at all. Therefore, “exterior space” is not an empty place, but a continuous environment full of particles, fields and subtle structures. In that sense, all space trips made by humans have elapsed within that extended wrapping that is still part of the planet that launched them. Image | Jasbond007 In Xataka | The last eeuu slap to Europe has sounded up to space: NASA has just left ESA with Artemis In Xataka | NASA is being very complicated to return to the moon. Your auditor no longer trusts that it can fly over for 2025

NASA’s longest -lived astronaut has returned to the land in his 70th birthday. We are left without the best space photographer

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There are ways and ways to celebrate a birthday, but few like Don Petit’s. He NASA’s longest active astronaut He returned to Earth after seven months at the International Space Station just the day he turned 70. A bittersweet milestone because, although it is healthy and safe, we lose the unique perspective of one of the best photographers of space. Delicated landing in the kazaja steppe. 220 days after its launch aboard the Soyuz MS-26 Russian capsule landed on the plains of Kazakhstan Together with his crew companions, the Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin (53 years old) and Ivan Vagner (39 years old). The landing occurred without technical setbacks, although with a small scare: Pettit needed immediate medical attention when extracted from the capsule. The cameras captured him practically motionless after landingwhich revived the debate on the Russian practice to expose the crew instead of prioritizing its intimacy, as is done in the United States and China. 70th birthday, and farewell? “When our capsule lands on those desert plains, I will be literally on the other side of the earth, almost 19,000 kilometers from home. However, I will be at home,” Don Pettit wrote from the orbit shortly before returning. A reflection that puts in perspective what ‘home’ means after seven months seeing the earth 400 km high, from the International Space Station. This has been the fourth space mission for Petit, which accumulates a total of 590 days in space. Despite being NASA’s longest astronaut, it is only the tenth human being that accumulates more time outside the earth. With 48 active astronauts in the space agencythe last incorporated in 2022, it should be thought that this could be its last mission to space. Goodbye to the ISS photographer. If we will miss this astronaut is his extraordinary ability for photography. Pettit is one of the best photographers who have gone through the ISS and during this last mission, he has given us spectacular images again: The dairy and Starlinks: one of its last captures shows the core of our galaxy and zodiac light, with Starlink satellitous steles crossing in the frame Reimaginated terrestrial landscapes: using infrared filters or playing with the reflection of the sun, Petit reveals hidden details of oceanic currents or terrestrial geology with an almost pictorial quality Atmospheric phenomena: captured impressive northern lights during the intense new year solar activity and contributed to the study of elusive “transient light events” (Tles), electric discharges on storms Long exhibition: Master of this technique, has created iconic images of stars steles or the night lights of cities turned into rivers of light by the Iss orbital movement More than photos. Chemical Training and Scientific Engineer rather than Astronaut, Pettit’s creativity is not limited to photography .. invented A cup of coffee to drink without straw taking advantage of the surface tension of the microgravity fluid. And a device that compensates for the movement of the International Space Station to obtain more clear nightcare photos on Earth. It is also Famous for his “Opportunity Science”small experiments carried out in their free time to demonstrate physical principles in microgravity. To play with drops of water charged electrostátically to freeze ice sheets To study their crystals with polarized filters in the freezers of the station. With the return of Soyuz MS-26, expedition 73 is under the command of Japanese Takuya Onishi. He is accompanied by NASA Astronauts Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers and Jonny Kim, and Russian cosmonauts Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky. In Xataka | The best photos from the International Space Station are made by the same astronaut: Don Pettit

A Pakistani astronaut at the Chinese space station is not only unusual. It is China occupying US power vacuum

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In the coming years, the Chinese Space Station Tiangong You will receive your first crew of another nation, Pakistan. Although it will be a short -term mission, it represents a cycle change: China opening to other countries, while the United States closes. The agreement. China and Pakistan They signed a cooperation agreement on Friday To train Pakistani astronauts and perform the first international missions to the Chinese Space Station Tiangong. China and Pakistan will dedicate a year from May to select Pakistani astronauts, who will be trained in China before joining their counterparts in the neighboring country in the Orbital Laboratory for short -term missions. Chinese-Pakistan ties. Pakistan was one of the first countries to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1950. The two nations have continued to strengthen ties since then, both economically as in the military and technological: according to the CIA, China even helped develop Pakistan’s nuclear program in the 80s. In recent years, Pakistan has sought to improve his spatial capabilities by resorting to the help of his neighbors. In May, it was one of the countries that placed experiments aboard the Chang’e-6 lunar probe, which ended up turning China into The first country to recover successfully Soil samples of the hidden face of the moon. Which symbolizes tiangong. China decided to develop its own space station after the United States prohibited Any direct collaboration between NASA and the Chinese Space Agency (CNSA), preventing its participation in the International Space Station. After trying two prototypes (Tiangong-1 between 2011 and 2018 and Tiangong-2 between 2016 and 2019), China launched the first module of its permanent space station in 2021. The Tiangong Space Station has three modules and is uninterruptedly inhabited Since 2022, with astronaut rotation missions, first, every three months, and then, every six. The twilight of the ISS. With 16 pressurized modules (the oldest, 26 years old), the International Space Station has long been the maximum exponent of cooperation between countries. But Structural fatigue begins to be a problem and maintenance investments have been increasing. The official plan (Elon Musk has his own) is to keep the ISS operational until 2030 and then tow it to a safe place where to let it disintegrate by entering the atmosphere. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, wants to have its own space station, and NASA trusts that the ISS is replaced by a commercial stations plethora. The future of the low orbit. There are few companies that are developing commercial space stations to offer space tourism services, experiments in microgravity and, ultimately, cover the hole that the ISS will leave from 2030: Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Voyager Space and Airbus… But neither does it lack ambition to China in the extensions planned for its space station, Tiangong, which in the coming years will double the number of modules to six And it will begin to accommodate, as we have seen, astronauts from other countries. Another next milestone will be the launch Xuntian Space Telescopescheduled for 2026. It will share the same orbit as the station (400 km altitude) and may be coupled to it for maintenance and improvement tasks. China occupies power vacuum. When NASA definitely abandons the low terrestrial orbit (or delegate it to its commercial partners), China will be there to occupy the void, opening to other countries to accommodate its astronauts, taking advantage of a abandonment of functions in international cooperation. It will not be the first time that China occupies a space that the United States leaves free. It has occurred on the Moon, ignored by NASA for a long time from the Apollo missions, occasion that the Chinese space agency took the opportunity to achieve symbolic milestones such as alunizar on the hidden satellite face and bring the first soil samples. Cycle change. With NASA receiving instructions to conquer Mars after Elon Musk convinced Donald Trump that the moon is a distraction, the NASA Artemis missions They are questioned. Now China has an opportunity. Not only to establish the “De facto International Space Station” in the low terrestrial orbit, but also a series of milestones that NASA had marked in its calendar of symbolic victories. The First woman who steps on the moon It could be China, if Artemis ends up falling apart. And then the first lunar orbital station? And then the First manned lunar base? If there is a cycle change, China will take advantage of it. Images | Shujianyang, China Ministry of Foreign Affairs In Xataka | 400,000 meters above the earth, China is undertaking a crucial mission in its space station: fortify it In Xataka | It is not that Elon Musk has managed to introduce its influence on NASA. Is that he has entered sweeping

Why an astronaut was obsessed with failure (and the lesson that leaves us to improve our productivity)

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Most of us avoid thinking about failure. And when we do it is usually something inevitable, but ephemeral, because we flee from that thought. Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who commanded the International Space Station, did exactly the opposite throughout his career: Metustically visualized each possible failure. Because? To prevent it. What seems like a paradox (focusing on failure to achieve success) makes some sense. Precisely in its workplace, space, an error can mean death. There, NASA dedicates Much of the training time to practice the response against emergencies. It is not pessimism, but strategic preparation. It is a method applicable to everyday life and on the earth’s surface. When We visualize what can go wrong in a project or an important decisionwe are reducing anxiety and uncertainty. And improving our response capacity. It is like having a mental GPS that has already calculated alternative routes before encountering the first obstacle. But there is a trap: The key is not to become obsessed with the worst scenarios, but to turn them into contingency plans. Hadfield did not limit himself to imagining disasters, but developed specific responses for each one. He turned fear into something productive. The method can be reduced to three steps: Identify fissures. Develop a specific response for each one. You practice those answers until they become automatic. This method makes sense and works because Eliminates the surprise factor of failure. When you have already visualized a problem, and practiced the answer to it, our brain processes it as a similar situation, not as a crisis. Hadfield came to command the International Space Station preparing obsessively for everything that could go wrong. We, at a more mundane, literal and metaphorical level, we can achieve our goals by systematically proof all possible fissures. It is not something that guarantees success, but it is a way of thinking that it will make us more competent already proof of failures. Outstanding image | NASA / Wikipedia Commons In Xataka | We are most concerned about procrastination. There is a dark reverse: “Precrasting”, do too much ahead of time

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