The crew is two weeks away from a historic launch. Astronauts Robert “Bob” Behnken and Douglas “Doug” Hurley entered a pre-flight quarantine today as they get ready to launch to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle as part of SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission. This type of quarantine is known officially as “flight crew health stabilization,” and is used to ensure that they will be healthy and will not carry any contagious illnesses to the space station. It is standard procedure and not related to the ongoing coronavirus issues.

This mission, scheduled to launch later this month on May 27 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, will be the first crewed mission for the vehicle and will be the first crewed mission to orbit since NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.

If you have always wanted to pilot a spaceship, here’s your big chance to simulate the experience. Keep in mind it is harder than it looks.

SpaceX released an International Space Station docking simulator that is very close to the real thing that Crew Dragon astronauts may experience starting on the test flight scheduled for May 27.

SpaceX’s latest Starship prototype keeps passing tests, edging closer and closer to a highly anticipated test flight.

The SN4 vehicle, the latest pathfinder for SpaceX’s Starship Mars-colonization spacecraft, aced a high-pressure and high-simulated-thrust trial at the company’s Boca Chica facilities in South Texas.

But the SN4 looks poised to leave terra firma for the first time soon. Musk has said he wants the vehicle to make an uncrewed test flight to an altitude of about 500 feet (150 meters), and the prototype has now checked off a lot of boxes on the road to lift-off. That’s probably as high as the SN4 will get. SpaceX is already building its successor, the three-engine SN5, which Musk has said will target a test-flight altitude of 12 miles (20 kilometers).

This article is a fascinating look at the ancient Greeks’ understanding of Earth and the surrounding solar system, showing what they knew about the planets orbit around the sun, the size of the moon and the Earth’s circumference, as well as their design and use of the first known astronomical, mechanical calculator.

The Histories by Herodotus (484BC to 425BC) offers a remarkable window into the world as it was known to the ancient Greeks in the mid fifth century BC. Almost as interesting as what they knew, however, is what they did not know. This sets the baseline for the remarkable advances in their understanding over the next few centuries – simply relying on what they could observe with their own eyes.

Star Wars Day, May 4, celebrates George Lucas’s Star Wars media franchise.

The Kim Jackson Scholarship is a new scholarship at ANU.

It will support a promising female engineering student to pursue her passion for technology/engineering through an undergraduate degree at the ANU College of Engineering & Computer Science.

This exciting opportunity is valued at $20,000 per annum for each year of an ANU undergraduate engineering degree. The recipient must come from a non-metropolitan area to apply for this scholarship.

Europe’s spaceport will resume launch preparations in late May under new protective measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The French space agency CNES said April 29 that 100 people will travel from Europe to the Guiana Space Center on May 11, and will start preparations for a Vega rocket launch after a 14-day quarantine ending May 25.

Arianespace, the European company that launches from the Guiana Space Center, said April 29 that the spaceport’s first missions would be a mid-June Vega launch previously scheduled for March, followed by an Ariane 5 launch in late July.

Spaceflight changes much about the human body, including how the heart functions and how cells that create heart tissue behave. Scientists studying these changes on the International Space Station continue to report important discoveries.

The investigation showed that spaceflight affects communication within and between cells, cell development and core stem cell properties.

This is a great activity during the lockdown.

NASA JPL has created a citizen science program to assist in analysis of Mars terrain.

The labels will be used for training a classifier for MSL and M2020 Ground Ops. Perhaps for on-board algorithms in the future!

Thirty years ago Hubble launched into space on a mission to open humanity’s eyes to the wonders of the cosmos. With a captivating new photo, the “Cosmic Reef,” NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases the instruments’ incredible capabilities on its 30th anniversary.

In this new Hubble image, the telescope captured two neighbouring clouds of cosmic dust and gas: the giant red nebula NGC 2014 and a smaller blue nebula nearby called NGC 2020.

Hubble scientists named the image “Cosmic Reef,” because the sparkling, brilliant structures resemble a cosmic coral reef glistening in some secret corner of a deep ocean.

A NASA safety panel, Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP, believes the agency’s plan to launch a SpaceX commercial crew test flight in late May is feasible, although some issues still need to be resolved before the launch.

Sanders, the panel’s chair said the panel has been kept up to date by NASA about commercial crew activities, including plans for SpaceX’s Demo-2 crewed test flight scheduled for May 27. “We are aware of a few technical items that remain to be more fully understood,” she said, “but the path forward appears feasible.”

A new high-pressure ventilator developed by NASA engineers and tailored to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) patients passed a critical test Tuesday at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, an epicenter of COVID-19 in the United States.

Not all education can or should take place in the classroom. Some of the most educational, engaging and memorable experiences that students will ever have can be those that occur on excursions, camps, and study trips. The challenge for many schools is funding and resourcing such opportunities. With so many competing priorities, the focus for

How would you like to be part of a team representing Australia in a robotics competition against teams from at least 11 other countries, with the finals being conducted in real time on the International Space Station (ISS)? This is the latest in STEM outreach experiences being provided for Australia’s student population to advance team

We’ll be running weekly Live Spacechats on the Virgin Galactic YouTube channel. The first will take place this Thursday and will feature our Chief Astronaut Trainer, Beth Moses, talking through her flight to space.

In 2 days – get up early and listen to Beth!

NASA has suspended work on the James Webb Space Telescope as it prioritizes what agency missions require people to be on site during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement March 20, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said NASA had completed an assessment of work across the agency, deciding which projects are essential enough to require people to go to NASA centers or other facilities to work on them.

“We are going to take care of our people. That’s our first priority,” said Bridenstine. “Technology allows us to do a lot of what we need to do remotely, but, where hands-on work is required, it is difficult or impossible to comply with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines while processing spaceflight hardware, and where we can’t safely do that we’re going to have to suspend work and focus on the mission-critical activities.”