Space exploration

James Lovell, the steady astronaut who brought Apollo 13 home safely, has died

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Gemini and Apollo astronaut

Lovell was the first person to fly to the Moon twice.

Astronaut Jim Lovell takes a self-portrait aboard NASA’s Gemini 12 spacecraft during the final mission of the program in 1966. Credit: NASA

James Lovell, a member of humanity’s first trip to the moon and commander of NASA’s ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, has died at the age of 97.

Lovell’s death on Thursday was announced by the space agency.

“NASA sends its condolences to the family of Capt. Jim Lovell, whose life and work inspired millions of people across the decades,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy in a statement on Friday. “Jim’s character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount. We mourn his passing even as we celebrate his achievements.”

A four-time Gemini and Apollo astronaut, Lovell was famously portrayed in the 1995 feature film Apollo 13. The movie dramatized his role as the leader of what was originally planned as NASA’s third moon landing, but instead became a mission of survival after an explosion tore through his spacecraft’s service module.

“I know today when I came out many of you were expecting Tom Hanks, but you’re going to have to settle for little old me,” Lovell often said at his public appearances after the movie was released.

two men in tuxedos talk to each other while one stands and the other sits on a stage — Astronaut Jim Lovell (right) addressing Tom Hanks at the premiere of *Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience* at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in November 2002. Credit: collectSPACE.com

Practicing for the moon

Selected with NASA’s second group of astronauts in 1962, Lovell first launched aboard Gemini 7, the first mission to include a rendezvous with another crewed spacecraft (Gemini 6). Lifting off on a Titan II rocket on December 4, 1965, Lovell and the mission’s commander, Frank Borman, had one goal: to spend two weeks in Earth orbit in preparation for the later Apollo missions to the moon.

“It was very exciting to me,” said Lovell in a 1999 NASA oral history interview. “I mean, it was tedious work, you know, two weeks. We did have a break when [Wally] Schirra and [Tom] Stafford came up [on Gemini 6] and rendezvoused with us. And then they were up, I think, 24 hours and they went back down again. And we stayed up there for the full time. But it was quite rewarding.”

At 13 days, 18 hours, 35 minutes and one second, Gemini 7 was the longest space flight until a Russian Soyuz mission surpassed it in 1970. Lovell and Borman continued to hold the US record until the first crewed mission to Skylab, the nation’s first space station, in 1973.

Lovell then commanded Gemini 12, the final flight of the program, which launched on November 11, 1966. Only four days long, the mission stood out for demonstrating all of the skills needed to send astronauts to the moon, including rendezvousing and docking with an Agena target and the first successful spacewalks conducted by crewmate Buzz Aldrin.

“Buzz completed three spacewalks of about 5.5 hours and everything was fine,” said Lovell. “[We did] everything we were supposed to do, and [had] no problem at all. So, it was a major turning point in the ability to work outside a spacecraft.”

First and fifth

Lovell made his first trip to the moon as a member of the first-ever crew to fly to another celestial body. Reunited with Borman and joined by William “Bill” Anders, Lovell launched on Apollo 8 on December 21, 1968. The mission was also the first crewed flight of the Saturn V, the massive rocket designed to send astronauts from Earth to the moon.

“You had to pinch yourself,” Lovell said of the journey out. “Hey, we’re really going to the moon!” I mean, “You know, this is it!”

a man is seen wearing a white coveralls and brown head cap inside a spacecraft — A still from a 16mm motion picture film shows Jim Lovell during the Apollo 8 mission, the first flight by humans to the moon. Credit: NASA

Lovell and his Apollo 8 crewmates were the first to see the far side of the moon with their own eyes and the first to witness “Earthrise”—the sight of our home planet rising above the lunar horizon—their photographs of such were later credited with inspiring the environmental movement.

“We were so curious, so excited about being at the moon that we were like three school kids looking into a candy store window, watching those ancient old craters go by from—only 60 miles [97 kilometers] above the surface,” said Lovell.

Splashing down on December 27, 1968, the Apollo 8 mission brought to a close a year that had otherwise been troubled with riots, assassinations, and an ongoing war. A telegram sent to the crew after they were home said, “You saved 1968.”

“I was part of a thing that finally gave an uplift to the American people about doing something positive, which was really—that’s why I say Apollo 8 was really the high point of my space career,” said Lovell.

Even before launching on Apollo 13 on April 11, 1970, Lovell had decided it was going to be his last. At 42, he was the first person to launch four times into space. Had the flight gone to plan, he would have become the fifth person to walk on the moon and the first to wear red commander stripes while do so.

a man in a white spacesuit stands in front of a launch pad where a rocket is being prepared for his mission — Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission, poses for a photo with his Saturn V rocket on the launch pad in April 1970. Credit: NASA

Instead, there was a “problem.”

“I don’t know why I did this, but I looked out the right window, and that’s when I saw that at a high rate of speed, gas was escaping from the spacecraft. You could see a little plume of it,” said Lovell in an April 2000 interview with collectSPACE. “I then glanced at the oxygen gauges and one read zero and another was in the process of going down.”

“That is when I really felt we were in a very dangerous situation,” he said.

Lovell and his Apollo 13 crewmates Fred Haise and John “Jack” Swigert splashed down safely on April 17, 1970. In total, Lovell logged 29 days, 19 hours and three minutes on his four spaceflights.

Lovell was the 22nd person to enter orbit, and the 28th to fly into space, according to the Association of Space Explorers’ Registry of Space Travelers.

From the cockpit to the board

Born on March 25, 1928, in Cleveland, Ohio, Lovell achieved Eagle Scout as a member of the Boy Scouts and studied engineering as part of the US Navy’s “Flying Midshipman” program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1946 to 1948. Four years later, he was commissioned as an ensign and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Lovell reported for flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola in October 1952, and he was designated a naval aviator on February 1, 1954. He served at Moffett Field in Northern California and logged 107 deck landings during a deployment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La.

In July 1958, Lovell graduated at the top of the class at the Naval Air Test Center (today, the US Naval Test Pilot School) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. He was one of 110 candidates to be considered for NASA’s original Mercury 7 astronauts but was turned away due to a temporary medical concern. Instead, Lovell became the program manager for the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II supersonic jet.

In 1962, Lovell was serving as a flight instructor and safety engineering officer at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach when he was chosen for the second class of NASA astronauts, the “Next Nine.”

In addition to his prime crew assignments, Lovell also served on the backup crews for the Gemini 4, Gemini 9, and Apollo 11 missions, the latter supporting Neil Armstrong as backup commander. He also served on a panel studying what could be done in case of an in-flight fire after a fire on the launch pad claimed the lives of the Apollo 1 crew in 1967.

After the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell was named the deputy director of science and applications at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (today, Johnson Space Center) before retiring from both the space agency and Navy on March 1, 1973. Lovell became chief executive officer of Bay-Houston Towing Company in 1975 and then president of Fisk Telephone Systems in 1977.

On January 1, 1981, Lovell joined Centel Corporation as group vice president for business communications systems and, 10 years later, retired as executive vice president and a member of the company’s board of directors.

For 11 years, from 1967 to 1978, Lovell served as a consultant and then chairman of the Physical Fitness Council (today, the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition). He was a member of the board for several organizations, including Federal Signal Corporation in Chicago from 1984 to 2003 and the Astronautics Corporation of America in Milwaukee from 1990 to 1999. He was also chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation from 1997 to 2005.

Appearances and awards

From 1999 to 2006, Lovell helped run “Lovell’s of Lake Forest,” a restaurant that he and his family opened in Illinois. (The restaurant was then sold to Jay, Lovell’s son, but ultimately closed in 2015.)

In 1994, Lovell worked with Jeffrey Kluger to publish Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, which was later retitled Apollo 13 after serving as the basis for the Ron Howard movie.

In addition to being played by Hanks and having a cameo in Apollo 13, Lovell was also portrayed by Tim Daly in the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon and Pablo Schreiber in the 2018 Neil Armstrong biopic First Man. Lovell also made a cameo appearance in the 1976 movie The Man Who Fell to Earth.

a man in a blue flight suit and ball cap shakes hands with a man in a business suit outside under a clear blue sky — Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 commander, shakes hands with President Richard Nixon after being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at Hickham Air Force Base, Hawaii, in 1970. Credit: NASA

For his service to the US space program, Lovell was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service and Exceptional Service medals; the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a member of the Gemini 7, Gemini 12, and Apollo 8 crews, Lovell was bestowed the Harmon International Trophy three times and, with his Apollo 8 crewmates, the Robert J. Collier and Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial trophies and was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1968.

Lovell was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982, the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993, and National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1998.

A crater on the far side of the moon was named for Lovell in 1970. In 2009, he was awarded a piece of the moon as part of NASA’s Ambassador of Exploration Award, which Lovell placed on display at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum in Lexington Park, Maryland.

A statue of Lovell with his two Apollo 13 crewmates stands inside the Saturn V building at Johnson Space Center’s George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park in Houston.

Lovell’s legacy

In 2005, Lovell donated his personal collection of NASA memorabilia to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, where it is on display in the “Mission Moon” exhibition.

With Lovell’s death, only five out of the 24 people who flew to the moon during the Apollo program remain living (Buzz Aldrin, 95; Fred Haise, 91; David Scott, 93; Charlie Duke, 89; and Harrison Schmitt, 90).

Lovell is survived by his children, Barbara Harrison, James Lovell III, Susan Lovell, and Jeffrey Lovell; 11 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Lovell was preceded in death by his wife Marilyn Lovell and parents James Lovell, Sr, and Blanche Lovell (Masek).

“We are enormously proud of his amazing life and career accomplishments, highlighted by his legendary leadership in pioneering human space flight,” said Lovell’s family in a statement. “But, to all of us, he was dad, granddad and the leader of our family. Most importantly, he was our hero. We will miss his unshakeable optimism, his sense of humor and the way he made each of us feel we could do the impossible. He was truly one of a kind.”

A memorial service and burial will be held at the Naval Academy in Annapolis on a date still to be announced.

Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE, a daily news publication and online community focused on where space exploration intersects with pop culture. He is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of “Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He is on the leadership board for For All Moonkind and is a member of the American Astronautical Society’s history committee.

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Texas politicians warn Smithsonian it must not lobby to retain its space shuttle

Anti-Lobbying Act, Board of Regents, Bring the Space Shutle Home Act, Chancellor, Chantilly, congress, discovery, internal invesigation, John Corbyn, John Roberts, National Air and Space Museum, One Big Beautiful Bill, Randy Weber, representative, senator, Smithsonian, Space, space center houston, Space exploration, space history, Space shuttle, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, texas, Virginia / 9u50fv / August 8, 2025

(Oddly, Cornyn and Weber’s letter to Roberts described the law as requiring Duffy “to transfer a space vehicle involved in the Commercial Crew Program” rather than choosing a destination NASA center related to the same, as the bill actually reads. Taken as written, if that was indeed their intent, Discovery and the other retired shuttles would be exempt, as the winged orbiters were never part of that program. A request for clarification sent to both Congress members’ offices was not immediately answered.)

two men in business suits sit front of a large model of a space shuttle — Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX, at right) sits in front of a model of Space Shuttle *Discovery* at Space Center Houston, where they want to move the real orbiter. Credit: collectSPACE.com

In the letter, Cornyn and Weber cited the Anti-Lobbying Act as restricting the use of funds provided by the federal government to “influence members of the public to pressure Congress regarding legislation or appropriations matters.”

“As the Smithsonian Institution receives annual appropriations from Congress, it is subject to the restrictions imposed by this statute,” they wrote.

The money that Congress allocates to the Smithsonian accounts for about two-thirds of the Institution’s annual budget, primarily covering federal staff salaries, collections care, facilities maintenance, and the construction and revitalization of the buildings that house the Smithsonian’s 21 museums and other centers.

Pols want Smithsonian to stay mum

As evidence of the Smithsonian’s alleged wrongdoing, Cornyn and Weber cited a July 11 article by Zach Vasile for Flying Magazine, which ran under the headline “Smithsonian Pushing Back on Plans to Relocate Space Shuttle.” Vasile quoted from a message the Institution sent to Congress saying that there was no precedent for removing an object from its collection to send it elsewhere.

The Texas officials wrote that the anti-lobbying restrictions apply to “staff time or public relations resources” and claimed that the Smithsonian’s actions did not fall under the law’s exemptions, including “public speeches, incidental expenditures for public education or communications, or activities unrelated to legislation or appropriations.”

Cornyn and Weber urged Roberts, as the head of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, to “conduct a comprehensive internal review” as it applied to how the institution responded to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Should the review reveal that appropriated funds were used in a manner inconsistent with the prohibitions outlined in the Anti-Lobbying Act, we respectfully request that immediate and appropriate corrective measures be implemented to ensure the Institution’s full compliance with all applicable statutory and ethical obligations,” Cornyn and Weber wrote.

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Houston, you’ve got a space shuttle… only NASA won’t say which one

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An orbiter by any other name…

“The acting administrator has made an identification.”

Don’t say Discovery: Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has decided to send a retired space shuttle to Houston, but won’t say which one. Credit: Smithsonian/collectSPACE.com

The head of NASA has decided to move one of the agency’s retired space shuttles to Houston, but which one seems to still be up in the air.

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), who earlier this year introduced and championed an effort to relocate the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space Center Houston, issued a statement on Tuesday evening (August 5) applauding the decision by acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy.

“There is no better place for one of NASA’s space shuttles to be displayed than Space City,” said Cornyn in the statement. “Since the inception of our nation’s human space exploration program, Houston has been at the center of our most historic achievements, from training the best and brightest to voyage into the great unknown to putting the first man on the moon.”

Keeping the shuttle a secret, for some reason

The senator did not state which of NASA’s winged orbiters would be making the move. The legislation that required Duffy to choose a “space vehicle” that had “flown in space” and “carried people” did not specify an orbiter by name, but the language in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law last month was inspired by Cornyn and fellow Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s bill to relocate Discovery.

“The acting administrator has made an identification. We have no further public statement at this time,” said a spokesperson for Duffy in response to an inquiry.

a man with gray hair and pale complexion wears a gray suit and red tie while sitting at a table under a red, white and blue NASA logo on the wall behind him

NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, identified a retired NASA space shuttle to be moved to “a non-profit near the Johnson Space Center” in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 5, 2025. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

It is not clear why the choice of orbiters is being held a secret. According to the bill, the decision was to be made “with the concurrence of an entity designated” by the NASA administrator to display the shuttle. Cornyn’s release only confirmed that Duffy had identified the location to be “a non-profit near the Johnson Space Center (JSC).”

Space Center Houston is owned by the Manned Space Flight Education Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization, and is the official visitor’s center for NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

“We continue to work on the basis that the shuttle identified is Discovery and proceed with our preparations for its arrival and providing it a world-class home,” Keesha Bullock, interim COO and chief communications and marketing officer at Space Center Houston, said in a statement.

Orbiter owners

Another possible reason for the hesitation to name an orbiter may be NASA’s ability, or rather inability, to identify one of its three remaining space-flown shuttles that is available to be moved.

NASA transferred the title for space shuttle Endeavour to the California Science Center in Los Angeles in 2012, and as such it is no longer US government property. (The science center is a public-private partnership between the state of California and the California Science Center Foundation.)

NASA still owns space shuttle Atlantis and displays it at its own Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

Discovery, the fleet leader and “vehicle of record,” was the focus of Cornyn and Cruz’s original “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act.” The senators said they chose Discovery because it was “the only shuttle still owned by the federal government and able to be transferred to Houston.”

For the past 13 years, Discovery has been on public display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, the annex for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. As with Endeavour, NASA signed over title upon the orbiter’s arrival at its new home.

As such, Smithsonian officials are clear: Discovery is no longer NASA’s to have or to move.

“The Smithsonian Institution owns the Discovery and holds it in trust for the American public,” read a statement from the National Air and Space Museum issued before Duffy made his decision. “In 2012, NASA transferred ‘all rights, title, interest and ownership’ of the shuttle to the Smithsonian.”

The Smithsonian operates as a trust instrumentality of the United States and is partially funded by Congress, but it is not part of any of the three branches of the federal government.

“The Smithsonian is treated as a federal agency for lots of things to do with federal regulations and state action, but that’s very different than being an agency of the executive branch, which it most certainly is not,” Nick O’Donnell, an attorney who specializes in legal issues in the museum and visual arts communities and co-chairs the Art, Cultural Property, and Heritage Law Committee of the International Bar Association, said in an interview.

a space shuttle orbiter sits at the center of a hangar on display — The Smithsonian has displayed the space shuttle *Discovery* at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, since April 2012. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“If there’s a document that accompanied the transfer of the space shuttle, especially if it says something like, ‘all rights, title, and interest,’ that’s a property transfer, and that’s it,” O’Donnell said.

“NASA has decided to transfer all rights, interest, title, and ownership of Discovery to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum,” reads the signed transfer of ownership for space shuttle orbiter Discovery (OV-103), according to a copy of the paperwork obtained by collectSPACE.

The Congressional Research Service also raised the issue of ownership in its paper, “Transfer of a Space Vehicle: Issues for Congress.”

“The ability of the NASA Administrator to direct transfer of objects owned by non-NASA entities—including the Smithsonian and private organizations—is unclear and may be subject to question. This may, in turn, limit the range of space vehicles that may be eligible for transfer under this provision.”

Defending Discovery

The National Air and Space Museum also raised concerns about the safety of relocating the space shuttle now. The One Big Beautiful Bill allocated $85 million to transport the orbiter and construct a facility to display it. The Smithsonian contends it could be much more costly.

“Removing Discovery from the Udvar-Hazy Center and transporting it to another location would be very complicated and expensive, and likely result in irreparable damage to the shuttle and its components,” the museum’s staff said in a statement. “The orbiter is a fragile object and must be handled according to the standards and equipment NASA used to move it originally, which exceeds typical museum transport protocols.”

“Given its age and condition, Discovery is at even greater risk today. The Smithsonian employs world-class preservation and conservation methods, and maintaining Discovery‘s current conditions is critical to its long-term future,” the museum’s statement concluded.

The law directs NASA to transfer the space shuttle (the identified space vehicle) to Space Center Houston (the entity designated by the NASA administrator) within 18 months of the bill’s enactment, or January 4, 2027.

In the interim, an amendment to block funding the move is awaiting a vote by the full House of Representatives when its members return from summer recess in September.

“The forced removal and relocation of the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum is inappropriate, wasteful, and wrong. Neither the Smithsonian nor American taxpayers should be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this misguided effort,” said Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), who introduced the amendment.

A grassroots campaign, KeepTheShutle.org, has also raised objection to removing Discovery from the Smithsonian.

Perhaps the best thing the Smithsonian can do—if indeed it is NASA’s intention to take Discovery—is nothing at all, says O’Donnell.

“I would say the Smithsonian’s recourse is to keep the shuttle exactly where it is. It’s the federal government that has no recourse to take it,” O’Donnell said. “The space shuttle [Discovery] is the Smithsonian’s, and any law that suggests the intention to take it violates the Fifth Amendment on its face—the government cannot take private property.”

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Lunar Outpost celebrates release of Lego Moon Rover Space Vehicle

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The set’s large, main futuristic rover with its rocker suspension, four-wheel steering, deployable solar panels, and rotating arm is not based on any specific vehicle Lunar Outpost is building now, but was inspired by the company’s plans.

More to come

“We have five lunar surface missions in total booked. One of the upcoming ones is really cool. It’s with the Australian Space Agency, so it will be Australia’s flagship lunar rover, which they affectionately call ‘Roo-ver,’ which I just love,” said Gemer.

Lunar Outpost’s next MAPP is targeted for launch in spring 2026. Using science instruments developed by NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU APL), the rover will investigate a magnetic anomaly that has gone unexplained for hundreds of years.

“So those missions will be going, [but] we want to do bigger things, better things, more collaborative, robotic missions. We really want to be the foundational infrastructure on the Moon,” Gemer said. “Mobility is one of those key enablers to building big and exciting things like a permanent human presence on the moon. So that’s why we set out to be the leaders in space mobility, and I think that’s what we’ve accomplished.”

building brick toys shaped as moon rovers on display in a blue-tinted dimly-lit room — Lunar Outpost displayed its new Lego Technic Moon Rover Space Vehicle at Space Center Houston on August 2, 2025. Credit: collectSPACE.com

Similarly, Lego is a leader when it comes to inspiring the next generation as to what is possible.

“I bet most engineers started out as a kid playing with Lego,” said Gemer. “We’ve got lots of great work to do with Lego, because it’s one of those foundational, inspirational things for kids in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math]. Tying that to space exploration, which is another one of those things everyone can connect with, it’s just a really natural partnership.”

Which brings it all back to Ari and Aiden and the Moon Rover Space Vehicle set.

“We built the MAPP rover, and then the resource collection rover. We are working our way up to the big one,” said Gemer. “I just want them to enjoy building it.”

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Smithsonian Air and Space opens halls for “milestone” and “future” artifacts

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$900M renovation nearing completion

John Glenn’s Friendship 7 returns as SpaceX and Blue Origin artifacts debut.

“Futures in Space” recaptures the experience of the early visitors to the National Air and Space Museum, where the objects on display were contemporary to the day. A mockup of a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule and SpaceX Merlin rocket engine are among the items on display for the first time. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

The National Air and Space Museum welcomed the public into five more of its renovated galleries on Monday, including two showcasing spaceflight artifacts. The new exhibitions shine modern light on returning displays and restore the museum’s almost 50-year-old legacy of adding objects that made history but have yet to become historical.

Visitors can again enter through the “Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall,” which has been closed for the past three years and has on display some of the museum’s most iconic items, including John Glenn’s Friendship 7 Mercury capsule and an Apollo lunar module.

From there, visitors can tour through the adjacent “Futures in Space,” a new gallery focused on the different approaches and technology that spaceflight will take in the years to come. Here, the Smithsonian is displaying for the first time objects that were recently donated by commercial spaceflight companies, including items used in space tourism and in growing the low-Earth orbit economy.

a museum gallery with air and spacecraft displayed on the terrazzo floor and suspended from the ceiling — The artifacts are iconic, but the newly reopened Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall at the National Air and Space Museum is all new. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We are thrilled to open this next phase of exhibitions to the public,” said Chris Browne, the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the National Air and Space Museum, in a statement. “Reopening our main hall with so many iconic aerospace artifacts, as well as completely new exhibitions, will give visitors much more to see and enjoy.”

The other three galleries newly open to the public are devoted to aviation history, including the “Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight,” “World War I: The Birth of Military Aviation,” and the “Allan and Shelley Holt Innovations Gallery.”

What’s new is not yet old

Among the artifacts debuting in “Futures in Space” are a Merlin engine and grid fin that flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Sian Proctor’s pressure suit that she wore on the private Inspiration4 mission in 2021, and a mockup of a New Shepard crew module that Blue Origin has pledged to replace with its first flown capsule when it is retired from flying.

“When the museum first opened back in 1976 and people came here and saw things like the Apollo command module and Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit, or really anything related to human spaceflight, at that point it was all still very recent,” said Matt Shindell, one of the curators behind “Futures in Space,” in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “So when you would come into the museum, it wasn’t so much a history of space but what’s happening now and what could happen next. We wanted to have a gallery that would recapture that feeling.”

Instead of being themed around a single program or period in history, the new gallery invites visitors to consider a series of questions, including: Who decides who goes to space? Why do we go? And what will we do when we get there?

a black and white astronaut's pressure suit and other space artifacts are displayed behind glass in a museum gallery with blue flooring and walls — Curatores designed “Futures in Space” around a list of questions, including “Why go to space?” On display is a pressure suit worn by Sian Proctor on the Inspiration4 mission and a 1978 NASA astronaut “TFNG” T-shirt. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We really wanted the gallery to be one that engaged visitors in these questions and that centered the experience around what they thought should be happening in the future and what that would mean for them,” said Shindell. “We also have visions of the future presented throughout the gallery, including from popular culture—television shows, movies and comic books—that have explored what the future might look like and what it would mean for the people living through it.”

That is why the gallery also includes R2-D2, or rather a reproduction of the “Star Wars” droid as built by Adam Savage of Tested. In George Lucas’ vision of the future (“a long, long time ago”), Astromech droids serve as spacecraft navigators, mechanics, and companion aides.

Beyond the artifacts and exhibits (which also include an immersive 3D-printed Mars habitat and Yuri Gagarin’s training pressure suit), there is a stage and seating area at the center of “Futures.”

“I think of it as a TED Talk-style stage,” said Shindell. “We’re hoping to bring in people from industry, stakeholders, people who have flown, people who are getting ready to fly, and people who have ideas about what should be happening to come and talk to visitors from that stage about the same questions that we’re asking in the gallery.”

Modernized “Milestones”

The artifacts presented in the “Boeing Milestones of Flight” are mostly the same as they were before the hall was closed in 2022. The hall underwent a renovation in 2014 ahead of the museum’s 40th anniversary, so its displays did not need another redesign.

Still, the gallery looks new due to the work done surrounding the objects.

“What is new for the ‘Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall’ is, at some level, most noticeably the floor and media elements,” said Margaret Weitekamp, curator and division chair at the National Air and Space Museum, in an interview.

“We have a wonderful 123-foot (37-meter) media band that goes across the front of the mezzanine, and we have 20 different slide shows that work as a digest of what you’ll find in the new galleries throughout the building,” said Weitekamp. “So as people come into the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, they’ll be greeted by that and get a taste of what they’re going to see inside.”

And then there is the new flooring. In the past, the hall had been lined in maroon or dark gray carpet. It is now a much lighter color terrazzo.

“It really brightens up the room,” Weitekamp told collectsPACE.

“Also, you’ll notice that as you are going up and down the hallways, there are medallions embedded in the floor that display quotes from significant aviation and spaceflight figures. So we’ve been able to put some quotes from Carl Sagan, Sally Ride, and Chuck Yeager into the floor,” she said.

the view looking down and into a museum gallery with aircraft suspended from the ceiling, spacecraft on display and a binary map embedded in the flooring — The pattern on the floor of the Boeing Milesones of Flight Hall is the pulsar-based map to Earth’s solar system that was mounted to the Pioneer and Voyager probes, now updated for 2026. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Visitors should also pay attention to what look like lines of dashes converging at the hall’s center. The design is an update to a NASA graphic.

“We have a revised version of the pulsar map from Pioneer 10 and 11 and the Voyager interstellar record,” said Weitekamp, referring to the representation of the location of Earth for any extraterrestrial species that might discover the probes in the future. “The map located Earth’s solar system with relationship to 14 pulsars.”

When the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft were launched, astronomers didn’t know that pulsars (or rotating neutron stars) slow down over time.

“So we worked with a colleague of ours to make it a map to our solar system as would be accurate for 2026, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the museum’s building and the 250th birthday of the nation,” Weitekamp said.

Thirteen open, eight to go

Monday’s opening followed an earlier debut of eight reimagined galleries in 2022. Also open is the renovated Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, which joins the planetarium, the museum store, and the Mars Café that were reopened earlier.

the exterior entrance to a building with a tall, spike-like silver sculpture standing front and center — The redesigned north entrance to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum opened to the public on Monday, July 28, 2025. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We are nearing the end of this multi-year renovation project,” said Browne. “We look forward to welcoming many more people into these modernized and inspiring new spaces,”

Eight more exhibitions are scheduled to open next year in time for the 50th anniversary of the National Air and Space Museum. Among those galleries are three that are focused on space: “At Home in Space,” “National Science Foundation Discovering Our Universe,” and “RTX Living in the Space Age Hall.”

Admission to the National Air and Space Museum and the new galleries is free, but timed-entry passes, available from the Smithsonian’s website, are required.

Smithsonian Air and Space opens halls for “milestone” and “future” artifacts Read More »

‘Not that into peace doves’: The Apollo-Soyuz patch NASA rejected

Alexei Leonov, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, ASTP, Bob McCall, Chris Calle, Deke Slayton, Jean Pinataro, mission patch, Paul Calle, peace, Space, space collectible, Space exploration, space history, space memorabilia, Thomas Stafford, Tim Gagnon, Valery Kubasov, Vance Brand / Beth Washington / July 15, 2025

a black and white ink drawing of a man carrying an oversized space mission patch running towards a launching rocket — Paul Calle’s July 1975 cartoon poking fun at his own rejected mission patch for the joint Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Credit: Calle Space Art

Rejects and revivals

Calle’s patch design was not the only one ruled out by NASA’s officials.

At first, Stafford, Brand, and Slayton chose a design from a contest among the US space program’s workforce. The winner, Jean Pinataro of North American Rockwell (the prime contractor for the Apollo command module), came up with a concept that the astronauts liked, but the agency’s leaders rejected it for not having enough “international significance” (unofficially, it was also said to be “cartoonish”).

That led to NASA accepting the cost of hiring an artist from the NASA art program and Calle being invited to offer his ideas. It also resulted in the patch that flew.

When Calle stepped away, the decision was made to repurpose the work of Bob McCall, an artist who had designed the Apollo 17 mission patch and in 1974 had painted the scene of the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft nearing a docking. McCall would go on to create similar art for a pair of postage stamps issued in the United States and the Soviet Union, while Pinataro adapted McCall’s original painting as the central image of the US ASTP emblem.

The cosmonauts had their own design—in fact, it was the first Russian mission patch to involve the crew’s input—but wore both their own and the US patch during their six days in space.

five colorful embroidered space patches each related to the 1975 Apollo -Soyuz Test Project — Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) patches, from top left to right: 2021 embroidered replica of Jean Pinataro’s original design; the Soviet Soyuz 18 crew patch; the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project crew patch; souvenir ASTP program patch; and ASTP program patch. Credit: AB Emblem/Roscosmos/collectSPACE.com

Today, 50 years later, the McCall-inspired design, the cosmonauts’ patch, and the Apollo-Soyuz program insignia are used interchangeably to represent the mission. Calle’s designs have been largely forgotten but are now getting a revival for the golden anniversary.

“I wanted to reimagine them. Not redo them, but bring them to life,” said Chris.

Working with a fellow artist Tim Gagnon, who created a number of the mission patches worn by space shuttle and International Space Station crews, Chris has begun the process of producing a limited number of embroidered patches based on his and his late father’s ideas.

Chris primarily focused on Calle’s dove and olive branch design.

“It certainly keeps to the spirit of my dad’s original idea,” Chris said.

Chris Calle asks readers to contact him via his website to be informed about when the limited-edition Apollo-Soyuz patches are available.

Click through to collectSPACE to see more of Paul Calle’s original designs and the reimagined versions by Chris Calle and Tim Gagnon.

‘Not that into peace doves’: The Apollo-Soyuz patch NASA rejected Read More »

“It’s a heist”: Senator calls out Texas for trying to steal shuttle from Smithsonian

Bring the Space Shutle Home Act, Chantilly, Dick Durbin, discovery, John Corbyn, NASA, National Air and Space Museum, One Big Beautiful Bill, senators, Smithsonian, Space, space center houston, Space exploration, space history, Space shuttle, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, ted cruz, texas, Virginia / Shannon Garcia / July 11, 2025

Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once in Houston.

Furthermore, it was unclear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let alone a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian’s collection. The Washington, DC, institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the US, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred “all rights, interest, title, and ownership” for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian.

“This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here? They don’t have the right in Texas to claim this,” said Durbin.

Houston was not the only city to miss out on displaying a retired space shuttle. In 2011, Durbin and fellow Illinois Senator Mark Kirk appealed to NASA to exhibit one of the winged spacecraft at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The agency ultimately decided to award the shuttles to the National Air and Space Museum, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, and the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Houston, we have a problem

A prototype orbiter that was exhibited where Discovery is now was transferred to the Intrepid Museum in New York City.

To be able to bring up his points at Thursday’s hearing, Durbin introduced the “Houston, We Have a Problem” amendment to “prohibit the use of funds to transfer a decommissioned space shuttle from one location to another location.”

He then withdrew the amendment after having voiced his objections.

“I think we’re dealing with something called waste. Eighty-five million dollars worth of waste. I know that this is a controversial issue, and I know that there are other agencies, Smithsonian, NASA, and others that are interested in this issue; I’m going to withdraw this amendment, but I’m going to ask my colleagues to be honest about it,” said Durbin. “I hope that we think about this long and hard.”

“It’s a heist”: Senator calls out Texas for trying to steal shuttle from Smithsonian Read More »

Turning the Moon into a fuel depot will take a lot of power

chemistry, oxygen, oxygen production, Science, Space, Space exploration / Shannon Garcia / February 18, 2025

Getting oxygen from regolith takes 24 kWh per kilogram, and we’d need tonnes.

Without adjustments for relativity, clocks here and on the Moon would rapidly diverge. Credit: NASA

If humanity is ever to spread out into the Solar System, we’re going to need to find a way to put fuel into rockets somewhere other than the cozy confines of a launchpad on Earth. One option for that is in low-Earth orbit, which has the advantage of being located very close to said launch pads. But it has the considerable disadvantage of requiring a lot of energy to escape Earth’s gravity—it takes a lot of fuel to put substantially less fuel into orbit.

One alternative is to produce fuel on the Moon. We know there is hydrogen and oxygen present, and the Moon’s gravity is far easier to overcome, meaning more of what we produce there can be used to send things deeper into the Solar System. But there is a tradeoff: any fuel production infrastructure will likely need to be built on Earth and sent to the Moon.

How much infrastructure is that going to involve? A study released today by PNAS evaluates the energy costs of producing oxygen on the Moon, and finds that they’re substantial: about 24 kWh per kilogram. This doesn’t sound bad until you start considering how many kilograms we’re going to eventually need.

Free the oxygen!

The math that makes refueling from the Moon appealing is pretty simple. “As a rule of thumb,” write the authors of the new study on the topic, “rockets launched from Earth destined for [Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1] must burn ~25 kg of propellant to transport one kg of payload, whereas rockets launched from the Moon to [Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1] would burn only ~four kg of propellant to transport one kg of payload.” Departing from the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point for locations deeper into the Solar System also requires less energy than leaving low-Earth orbit, meaning the fuel we get there is ultimately more useful, at least from an exploration perspective.

But, of course, you need to make the fuel there in the first place. The obvious choice for that is water, which can be split to produce hydrogen and oxygen. We know there is water on the Moon, but we don’t yet know how much, and whether it’s concentrated into large deposits. Given that uncertainty, people have also looked at other materials that we know are present in abundance on the Moon’s surface.

And there’s probably nothing more abundant on that surface than regolith, the dust left over from constant tiny impacts that have, over time, eroded lunar rocks. The regolith is composed of a variety of minerals, many of which contain oxygen, typically the heavier component of rocket fuel. And a variety of people have figured out the chemistry involved in separating oxygen from these minerals on the scale needed for rocket fuel production.

But knowing the chemistry is different from knowing what sort of infrastructure is needed to get that chemistry done at a meaningful scale. To get a sense of this, the researchers decided to focus on isolating oxygen from a mineral called ilmenite, or FeTiO₃. It’s not the easiest way to get oxygen—iron oxides win out there—but it’s well understood. Someone actually patented oxygen production from ilmenite back in the 1970s, and two hardware prototypes have been developed, one of which may be sent to the Moon on a future NASA mission.

The researchers propose a system that would harvest regolith, partly purify the ilmenite, then combine it with hydrogen at high temperatures, which would strip the oxygen out as water, leaving behind purified iron and titanium (both of which may be useful to have). The resulting water would then be split to feed the hydrogen back into the system, while the oxygen can be sent off for use in rockets.

(This wouldn’t solve the issue of what that oxygen will ultimately oxidize to power a rocket. But oxygen is typically the heavier component of rocket fuel combinations—typically about 80 percent of the mass—and so the bigger challenge to get to a fuel depot.)

Obviously, this process will require a lot of infrastructure, like harvesters, separators, high-temperature reaction chambers, and more. But the researchers focus on a single element: how much power will it suck down?

More power!

To get their numbers, the researchers made a few simplifying assumptions. These include assuming that it’s possible to purify ilmenite from raw regolith and that it will be present in particles small enough that about half the material present will participate in chemical reactions. They ignored both the potential to get even more oxygen from the iron and titanium oxides present, as well as the potential for contamination from problematic materials like hydrogen sulfide or hydrochloric acid.

The team found that almost all of the energy is consumed at three steps in the process: the high-temperature hydrogen reaction that produces water (55 percent), splitting the water afterwards (38 percent), and converting the resulting oxygen to its liquid form (five percent). The typical total usage, depending on factors like the concentration of ilmenite in the regolith, worked out to be about 24 kW-hr for each kilogram of liquid oxygen.

Obviously, the numbers are sensitive to how efficiently you can do things like heat the reaction mix. (It might be possible to do this heating with concentrated solar, avoiding the use of electricity for this entirely, but the authors didn’t analyze that.) But it was also sensitive to less obvious efficiencies. For example, a better separation of the ilmenite from the rest of the regolith means you’re using less energy to heat contaminants. So, while the energetic cost of that separation is small, it pays off to do it effectively.

Based on orbital observations, the researchers map out the areas where ilmenite is present at high enough concentrations for this approach to make sense. These include some of the mares on the near side of the Moon, so they’re easy to get to.

A map of the lunar surface with locations highlighted in color. — A map of the lunar surface, with areas with high ilmenite concentrations shown in blue. Credit: Leger, et. al.

On its own, 24 kWh doesn’t seem like a lot of power. The problem is that we will need a lot of kilograms. The researchers estimate that getting an empty SpaceX Starship from the lunar surface to the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point takes 80 tonnes of liquid oxygen. And a fully fueled starship can hold over 500 tonnes of liquid oxygen.

We can compare that to something like the solar array on the International Space Station, which has a capacity of about 100 kW. That means it could power the production of about four kilograms of oxygen an hour. At that rate, it’ll take a bit over 10 days to produce a tonne, and a bit more than two years to get enough oxygen to get an empty Starship to the Lagrange Point—assuming 24-7 production. Being on the near side, they will only produce for half the time, given the lunar day.

Obviously, we can build larger arrays than that, but it boosts the amount of material that needs to be sent to the Moon from Earth. It may potentially make more sense to use nuclear power. While that would likely involve more infrastructure than solar arrays, it would allow the facilities to run around the clock, thus getting more production from everything else we’ve shipped from Earth.

This paper isn’t meant to be the final word on the possibilities for lunar-based refueling; it’s simply an early attempt to put hard numbers on what ultimately might be the best way to explore our Solar System. Still, it provides some perspective on just how much effort we’ll need to make before that sort of exploration becomes possible.

PNAS, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2306146122 (About DOIs).

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

Turning the Moon into a fuel depot will take a lot of power Read More »

“Archeology” on the ISS helps identify what astronauts really need

Archeology, Science, Space, space archeology, Space exploration, space station / Mike M. / August 9, 2024

Archeology without the dig —

Regular photography shows a tool shed and more isolated toilet would be appreciated.

Jacek Krywko – Aug 9, 2024 5: 10 pm UTC

I woman holds a handheld device in front of a rack of equipment. — Enlarge / Jessica Watkins gets to work on the ISS

“Archeology really is a perspective on material culture we use as evidence to understand how humans adapt to their environment, to the situations they are in, and to each other. There is no place, no time that is out of bounds,” says Justin Walsh, an archeologist at Chapman University who led the first off-world archeological study on board the ISS.

Walsh’s and his team wanted to understand, document, and preserve the heritage of the astronaut culture at one of the first permanent space habitats. “There is this notion about astronauts that they are high achievers, highly intelligent, and highly trained, that they are not like you and me. What we learned is that they are just people, and they want the comforts of home,” Walsh says.

Disposable cameras and garbage

“In 2008, my student in an archeology class raised her hand and said, ‘What about stuff in space, is that heritage?’ I said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never thought of this before, but yes,’” Walsh says. “Think of Tranquility base—it’s an archeological site. You could go back there, and you could reconstruct not only the specific activities of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but you could understand the engineering culture, the political culture, etc. of the society that created that equipment, sent it to the Moon, and left it there.”

So he conceived the idea of an archeological study on the ISS, wrote a proposal, sent it to NASA, and got rejected. NASA said human sciences were not their priority and not part of their mission. But in 2021, NASA changed its mind.

“They said they had an experiment that could not be done at the scheduled time, so they had to delay it. Also, they changed the crew size from six to seven people,” says Walsh. These opened up some idle time in the astronauts’ schedules, allowing NASA to find space in the schedule for less urgent projects on the station. The agency gave Walsh’s team the go-ahead under the condition that their study could be done with the equipment already present on the ISS.

The outline of Walsh’s research was inspired by and loosely based on the Tucson Garbage Project and the Undocumented Migration Project, two contemporary archeology studies. The first drew conclusions about people’s lives by studying the garbage they threw away. The second documented the experiences of migrants on their way to the US from Mexico.

“Jason De León, who is the principal investigator of this project, gave people in Mexico disposable cameras, and he retrieved those cameras from them when they got to the US. He could observe things they experienced without being there himself. For me, that was a lightbulb moment,” says Walsh.

There were cameras on board the ISS and there was a crew to take pictures with them. To pull off an equivalent of digging a test pit in space, Walsh’s team chose six locations on the station, asked the crew to mark them with squares one meter across, and asked the astronauts to take a picture of each of those squares once a day for 60 days, from January to March 2022.

Building a space shed

In the first paper discussing the study’s results, Walsh’s team covered two out of six chosen locations, dubbed squares 03 and 05. The 03 square was in a maintenance area near the four crew berths where the US crew sleeps. It’s near docking ports for spacecraft coming to the ISS. The square was drawn around a blue board with Velcro patches meant to hold tools and equipment in place.

“All historic photographs of this location published by NASA show somebody working in there—fixing a piece of equipment, doing a science experiment,” says Walsh. But when his team analyzed day-by-day photos of the same spot, the items velcroed to the wall hardly changed in those 60 days. “It was the same set of items over and over again. If there was an activity, it was a scientific experiment. It was supposed to be the maintenance area. So where was the maintenance? And even if it was a science area, where’s the science? It was only happening on 10 percent of days,” Walsh says.

“Archeology” on the ISS helps identify what astronauts really need Read More »

Human muscle cells come back from space, look aged

Biology, gene activity, muscle cells, Science, Space, Space exploration / Shannon Garcia / August 2, 2024

Putting some muscle into it —

Astronauts’ muscles atrophy in space, but we can identify the genes involved.

Jacek Krywko – Aug 2, 2024 3: 33 pm UTC

Image of two astronauts in an equipment filled chamber, standing near the suits they wear for extravehicular activities. — Enlarge / Muscle atrophy is a known hazard of spending time on the International Space Station.

Muscle-on-chip systems are three-dimensional human muscle cell bundles cultured on collagen scaffolds. A Stanford University research team sent some of these systems to the International Space Station to study the muscle atrophy commonly observed in astronauts.

It turns out that space triggers processes in human muscles that eerily resemble something we know very well: getting old. “We learned that microgravity mimics some of the qualities of accelerated aging,” said Ngan F. Huang, an associate professor at Stanford who led the study.

Space-borne bioconstructs

“This work originates from our lab’s expertise in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. We received funding to do a tissue engineering experiment on the ISS, which really helped us embark on this journey, and became curious how microgravity affects human health,” said Huang. So her team got busy designing the research equipment needed to work onboard the space station. The first step was building the muscle-on-chip systems.

“A lot of what was known about how space affects muscles was gathered through studying the astronauts or studying animals like mice put in microgravity for research purposes,” Huang said. “In some cases, there were also in vitro cultured cells on a Petri dish—something very basic. We wanted to have something more structurally complex.” Her team developed a muscle-on-chip platform in which human myotubes, cells that organize into long parallel bundles that eventually become muscle fibers in a living organism, were grown on collagen scaffolds. The goal was to make the samples emulate real muscles better. But that came with a challenge: keeping them alive on the ISS.

“When we grow cells on Earth, we pour the medium—basically a liquid with nutrients that allow the cells to grow—over the cells, and everything is fine,” Huang said. “But in space, in the absence of gravity, we needed a closed, leak-proof, tightly sealed chamber. The medium was sloshed around in there.”

Oxygen and carbon dioxide levels were maintained with permeable membranes. Changing the medium was a complicated procedure involving syringes and small custom-designed ports. But getting all this gadgetry up and running was worth it in the end.

Genes of atrophy

Huang’s team had two sets of muscle-on-chip systems: one on the ground and one on the ISS. The idea of the study was to compare the genes that were upregulated or downregulated in each sample set. It turned out that many genes associated with aging saw their activity increase in microgravity conditions.

This result was confirmed when the team analyzed the medium that was taken off after the cells had grown in it. “The goal was to identify proteins released by the cells that were associated with microgravity. Among those, the most notable was the GDF15, which is relevant to different diseases, particularly mitochondrial dysfunction or senescence,” said Huang.

Overall, the condition of cells on the ISS was somewhat similar to sarcopenia, an age-related muscle loss disease. “There were some similarities, but also a lot of differences. The reason we didn’t make sarcopenia the main focus of this study is that we know our muscle-on-chip system is a model. It’s mostly muscle cells on a scaffold. It doesn’t have blood vessels or nerves. Comparing that to clinical, real muscle samples is a bit tricky, as it is not comparing apples to apples,” said Huang.

Nevertheless, her team went on to use their ISS muscle-on-chip samples to conduct proof-of-concept drug screening tests. Drugs they tested included those used to treat sarcopenia, among other conditions.

Space drugs

“One of the drugs we tested was the [protein] IGF 1, which is a growth factor naturally found in the body in different tissues, especially in muscles. When there is an injury, IGF 1 activates within a body to initiate muscle regeneration. Also, IGF 1 tend to be declined in aging muscles,” said Huang. The second drug tested was 15-PGDH-i, a relatively new inhibitor of enzymes that hinder the process of muscle regeneration. Used on the muscles-on-chip on the ISS, the drugs partially reduced some of the microgravity-related effects.

“One of the limitations of this work was that on the ISS, the microgravity is also accompanied by other factors, such as ionizing radiation, and it is hard to dissociate one from the other,” said Huang. It’s still unclear if the effects observed in the ISS samples were there due to radiation, the lack of gravity, both, or some additional factor. Huang’s team plans to do similar experiments on Earth in simulated microgravity conditions. “With some of the specialized equipment we recently acquired, it is possible to look at just the effects of microgravity,” Huang said. Those experiments are aimed at testing a wider range of drugs.

“The reason we do this drug screening is to develop drugs that could either be taken preemptively or during the flight to counteract muscle atrophy. It would probably be more feasible, lighter, and cheaper than doing artificial gravity concepts,” Huang said. The most promising candidate drugs selected in these ground experiments will be tested on Huang’s muscle-on-chip systems onboard the ISS in 2025.

Stem Cell Reports, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2024.06.010

Human muscle cells come back from space, look aged Read More »

Astronauts find their tastes dulled, and a VR ISS hints at why

food, Human behavior, international space station, Science, Space exploration, taste / Mike M. / July 26, 2024

Pass the sriracha —

The visual environment of the ISS seems to influence people’s experience of food.

Jacek Krywko – Jul 26, 2024 5: 17 pm UTC

Image of astronauts aboard the ISS showing off pizzas they've made. — Enlarge / The environment you’re eating in can influence what you taste, and space is no exception.

Astronauts on the ISS tend to favor spicy foods and top other foods with things like tabasco or shrimp cocktail sauce with horseradish. “Based on anecdotal reports, they have expressed that food in space tastes less flavorful. This is the way to compensate for this,” said Grace Loke, a food scientist at the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

Loke’s team did a study to take a closer look at those anecdotal reports and test if our perception of flavor really changes in an ISS-like environment. It likely does, but only some flavors are affected.

Tasting with all senses

“There are many environmental factors that could contribute to how we perceive taste, from the size of the area to the color and intensity of the lighting, the volume and type of sounds present, the way our surroundings smell, down to even the size and shape of our cutlery. Many other studies covered each of these factors in some way or another,” said Loke.

That’s why her team started to unravel the bland ISS food mystery by recreating the ISS environment in VR. “Certain environments are difficult to be duplicated, such as the ISS, which led us to look at digital solutions to mimic how it felt [to be] living and working in these areas,” said Julia Low, a nutrition and food technologist at the RMIT University and co-author of the study.

Once the VR version of the ISS was ready, the team had 54 participants smell flavors of vanilla, almonds, and lemon. The first round of tests was done in a pretty normal room, and the second with the VR goggles on, running the simulated ISS environment complete with sterile, cluttered spaces, sounds present at the real ISS, and objects floating around in microgravity.

The participants said the lemon flavor seemed the same in both rounds. Almonds and vanilla, on the other hand, seemed more intense when participants were in the VR environment. While that’s the opposite of what might be expected from astronauts’ dining habits, it is informative. “The bottom line is we may smell aromas differently in a space-like environment, but it is selective as to what kind of aromas. We’re not entirely sure why this happens, but knowing that a difference exists is the first step to find out more,” Loke said.

Loke and her colleagues then pulled out a mass spectrometer and took a closer look at the composition of the flavors they used in the tests.

Space-ready ingredients

The lemon flavor in Loke’s team tests was lemon essential oil applied to a cotton ball, which was then placed in a closed container that was kept sealed until it was given to the participants to smell. The vapors released from the container contained several volatile chemicals such as limonene, camphene, 3-carene, and monoterpene alcohols like linalool, carveol, and others.

Almond flavors contained similar chemicals, but there was one notable difference: the almond and vanilla flavors contained benzaldehyde, while the lemon did not. “Benzaldehyde naturally gives off a sweet aroma, while the lemon aroma, which did not have it, has a more fruity and citrusy aroma profile. We believe that it may be the sweet characteristics of aromas that leads to a more intense perception in [simulated] space,” said Loke.

Astronauts find their tastes dulled, and a VR ISS hints at why Read More »

Building robots for “Zero Mass” space exploration

materials science, robotics, Science, Space, Space exploration / Shannon Garcia / February 9, 2024

A robot performing construction on the surface of the moon against the black backdrop of space.

Sending 1 kilogram to Mars will set you back roughly $2.4 million, judging by the cost of the Perseverance mission. If you want to pack up supplies and gear for every conceivable contingency, you’re going to need a lot of those kilograms.

But what if you skipped almost all that weight and only took a do-it-all Swiss Army knife instead? That’s exactly what scientists at NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University are testing with robots, algorithms, and highly advanced building materials.

Zero mass exploration

“The concept of zero mass exploration is rooted in self-replicating machines, an engineering concept John von Neumann conceived in the 1940s”, says Kenneth C. Cheung, a NASA Ames researcher. He was involved in the new study published recently in Science Robotics covering self-reprogrammable metamaterials—materials that do not exist in nature and have the ability to change their configuration on their own. “It’s the idea that an engineering system can not only replicate, but sustain itself in the environment,” he adds.

Based on this concept, Robert A. Freitas Jr. in the 1980s proposed a self-replicating interstellar spacecraft called the Von Neumann probe that would visit a nearby star system, find resources to build a copy of itself, and send this copy to another star system. Rinse and repeat.

“The technology of reprogrammable metamaterials [has] advanced to the point where we can start thinking about things like that. It can’t make everything we need yet, but it can make a really big chunk of what we need,” says Christine E. Gregg, a NASA Ames researcher and the lead author of the study.

Building blocks for space

One of the key problems with Von Neumann probes was that taking elements found in the soil on alien worlds and processing them into actual engineering components was resource-intensive and required huge amounts of energy. The NASA Ames team solved that with using prefabricated “voxels”—standardized reconfigurable building blocks.

The system derives its operating principles from the way nature works on a very fundamental level. “Think how biology, one of the most scalable systems we have ever seen, builds stuff,” says Gregg. “It does that with building blocks. There are on the order of 20 amino acids which your body uses to make proteins to make 200 different types of cells and then combines trillions of those cells to make organs as complex as my hair and my eyes. We are using the same strategy,” she adds.

To demo this technology, they built a set of 256 of those blocks—extremely strong 3D structures made with a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer called StattechNN-40CF. Each block had fastening interfaces on every side that could be used to reversibly attach them to other blocks and form a strong truss structure.

A 3×3 truss structure made with these voxels had an average failure load of 900 Newtons, which means it could hold over 90 kilograms despite being incredibly light itself (its density is just 0.0103 grams per cubic centimeter). “We took these voxels out in backpacks and built a boat, a shelter, a bridge you could walk on. The backpacks weighed around 18 kilograms. Without technology like that, you wouldn’t even think about fitting a boat and a bridge in a backpack,” says Cheung. “But the big thing about this study is that we implemented this reconfigurable system autonomously with robots,” he adds.

Building robots for “Zero Mass” space exploration Read More »