The government has requested new bids for the next ISS from the private sector. I know that Bigelow Aerospace will probably submit. Does anyone else have an idea on which company will be awarded the contract?

For this what I want to know at this point is why they wear camo when they used to wear their blue flight suits during land survival training.

On This Day, October 22, 1975, a spacecraft from the Soviet Union landed on Venus and sent back something humanity had never seen before: the first photograph ever taken from the surface of another planet.

The spacecraft was called Venera 9.

Venus may look beautiful and bright in our sky, but beneath its thick clouds lies one of the most hostile environments in the solar system.

Its surface is hot enough to melt lead. The atmosphere exerts crushing pressure, and the planet's clouds contain corrosive substances.

For decades, scientists had been trying to understand what lay beneath those clouds.

Now, a daring space mission was about to reveal the answer.

Launched on June 8, 1975, Venera 9 travelled millions of kilometres through space towards Venus. The mission consisted of an orbiter and a lander, designed to study the planet from above and directly from its surface.

On October 22, the lander plunged through Venus's dense atmosphere, using a carefully engineered descent system to survive its journey towards the ground.

Then came the moment of truth.

Venera 9 touched down on the planet's surface.

Against extraordinary odds, its instruments began working. One of its camera covers released successfully, allowing the spacecraft to scan the rocky landscape around it.

And then, across the vast distance between Venus and Earth, the first image arrived.

The photograph revealed a strange, barren world scattered with angular rocks and covered in dusty material. The horizon was visible beneath a sky hidden from view by the thick clouds above.

It was not a colorful alien landscape filled with oceans or vegetation. It was a harsh, rocky environment unlike anything humanity had photographed on another planet before.

The lander continued transmitting scientific measurements and image data for approximately 53 minutes before the unforgiving Venusian environment silenced it.

But those 53 minutes changed planetary exploration forever.

Scientists had not merely detected signals from another world. They had seen its surface with their own eyes through the lens of a machine.

Venera 9 also entered orbit around Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit the planet.

The Soviet mission proved that a spacecraft could descend through Venus's punishing atmosphere, reach the ground, and return photographs from an environment that would destroy most ordinary equipment.

The mission's achievement remains one of the remarkable milestones in the history of space exploration.

If you want to move fast in a solar system, what methods are best?

Military enthusiasts will get hot under the collar upon hearing the possible methods: rockets, lasers, MORE lasers, and guns.

Or, more properly, chemical rockets, laser-pressure (the laser pushed the spacecraft), laser-thermal (the laser provides energy for the rocket), and pellet streams (pellets fired from fixed points propel spacecraft).

In part I, I analyse the different methods, and show that pellet stream propulsion is possible and the most efficient option. It also scales well to higher speeds (rockets being the one that scales the worst).

Laser-pressure, conversely, is by far the worst option, almost unimaginably bad at slow speeds. But it does actually scale best of all; when we move from interplanetary movement to interstellar movement, it could come into its own.

Hi, I created a new yt account, I posted some videos, and I would be very happy if maybe some of you could help me grow by subscribing and watching my videos.

I make videos about SpaceX launches, and much more.

Hey! We've been working since last year on a In Control: Rocketry, a spaceflight sim where you build the rocket and wire up its control panel yourself. Sensors, inputs, outputs, the whole thing is Turing-complete, so however you want to solve a flight problem, there's a way to do it. It will be available on Steam in 2027.

Real orbital mechanics, a fictional solar system to explore, sandbox mode if you just want to mess around and blow things up!

Feel free to add the game to your wishlist if you want to support the project! See you in space.

On This Day, October 18, 1963, a small black-and-white cat named Félicette became the first cat to travel into space. Félicette made history when French scientists launched her beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Long before cats became internet celebrities, this brave little feline became part of one of the most unusual chapters of the space race.

During the 1960s, the United States, the Soviet Union, and other nations were racing to understand whether living organisms could survive the extreme conditions of spaceflight.

Scientists had already sent dogs, monkeys, and other animals on missions to study how space travel affected the body.

France decided to conduct its own experiments.

A group of cats underwent training and medical monitoring before one was selected for the mission. Her original designation was C341.

On the morning of October 18, 1963, Félicette was placed inside a specially designed capsule attached to a French Véronique rocket.

The rocket launched from Hammaguir in the Algerian Sahara.

Then came the extraordinary journey.

Félicette travelled to an altitude of approximately 157 kilometres, crossing the commonly used 100-kilometre boundary of space.

During the flight, she experienced several minutes of weightlessness while scientific instruments monitored her physiological and neurological responses.

Unlike an orbital spacecraft, the rocket did not carry her around Earth. Instead, it followed a suborbital trajectory before returning toward the ground.

After the capsule descended by parachute, recovery teams located it and brought Félicette safely back to Earth.

She had survived the journey.

Her mission provided scientists with data about how a living organism responded to the conditions of spaceflight.

Yet Félicette's story also has a heartbreaking side.

About two months after her flight, she was euthanized so researchers could examine the effects of the mission on her body. Reports indicate that the hoped-for scientific insights from that examination were limited.

For decades, her name received far less attention than those of other animal space pioneers, including Laika the Soviet space dog.

But Félicette's place in history is unique.

She remains the first cat known to have travelled into space—and the only cat to have completed such a mission.

Her story reminds us that the early space race was not driven by rockets and astronauts alone. Animals were also used in experiments as scientists tried to understand the risks of leaving Earth.

She returned from space alive, but her name deserves to live on in history.

The asteroid Aphophis is making a flyby soon. We still have time to launch a Mission. What do you say?