Tausi Insider

Photo : Dima Zel ( Shutterstock ) While we’re waiting on NASA’s Artemis I moon rocket to (maybe) finally launch this week , there’s another space event worth tuning in for: T wo American astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station are taking their first spacewalk on Tuesday, Nov. 15. 02:50 Chopping Basics Wednesday 11:09AM 01:38 How to Retire in Phases Wednesday 10:53AM NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio are exiting the space station to place mounting hardware for solar arrays, which will be installed on the exterior of the ISS over the course of several planned spacewalks in the coming months. Here’s how to watch it live. How to watch the NASA spacewalk Live coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 6:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Nov. 1. on NASA TV , the NASA app, and NASA’s website . At 8 a.m. ET, the astronauts will leave the space station’s airlock to begin their installation mission. The event is expected to last about seven hours. The broadcast is expected...

NASA's new moon rocket, as seen from a marina on Florida's Merritt Island, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on Nov. 16. Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP Like a powerful beacon lighting the way to a distant shore, the Artemis I spacecraft sliced across the dark Florida sky early Wednesday setting a course for the moon and carrying with it dreams of a new chapter in human space flight. The 1:47 a.m. launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center comes one month shy of 50 years since an astronaut last set foot on the lunar surface, marking the end of the Apollo program. And while Artemis I carries no crew – in place of astronauts its capsule is occupied by three mannequins – the 26-day mission around the moon and back marks a critical step by the U.S. space agency toward repeating that historic feat and then surpassing it with visits to more daring landing sites for longer periods of time. Ultimately, the stated objective of the Artemis program is to lay t...

Despite the serious commercial interest, there is still a vanity play attached to visiting that big hunk of green cheese in the sky. John Raoux/The Associated Press Gus Carlson is a New York-based columnist for Tausi Insider. The moon, if you are old enough to remember, used to be a pretty cool place. Singers crooned about it, poets rhapsodized on it, movie makers dramatized it and Cold War powers competed for it. Ralph Kramden, the gruff 1950s television bus driver, considered it to be the perfect place for his wife, Alice. Now, after decades out of the spotlight in the United States, the moon is cool again. Earlier this month, the first U.S. rocket ship scheduled to land on the moon in 50 years lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But this next-generation space race is as much about commerce as it is about politics, poetry or passion. This latest mission aboard a SpaceX ship is mainly funded by ispace of Tokyo, which will be the first private company in history to l...

The Sherloc technology currently installed on the Mars Rover, in a handout photo. HO/The Canadian Press The same technology used to search for signs of ancient life on Mars could be key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the Canadian oil sands. At least that’s what members of the Pathways Alliance – an industry consortium of this country’s six largest oil sands companies – appear to believe. On Thursday, the group announced Impossible Sensing Energy, the Calgary-based affiliate of U.S. space exploration company Impossible Sensing, as the winner in an industry-sponsored global competition aimed at helping to accelerate the wide-scale use of steam-reducing technologies in oil sands operations. The company won with a proposal to use optical imaging technology, adapted from its Sherloc system currently installed on the Mars Rover, in an oil sands application. Just as optical imaging can be used to search for faint traces of potential carbon-based past life on Mars, it can also det...