Month: December 2021

This year saw more space tourists fly to space on a bunch of different systems, and the story has only just begun. 

Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX each flew their first tourist-focused missions this year, sending aloft several people each with minimal training in professional spaceflight. Meanwhile, Roscosmos (the Russian federal space agency) brought two sets of space tourists into space, including a mission with Space Adventures.

With 2022 also set to be busy, between more tourist flights and the expected addition of company Axiom Space (using a SpaceX Crew Dragon), we rounded up some of the main milestones of 2021 below.

Video: Life on the International Space Station in 2021

1) Axiom Space announces first crew for 2022

Axiom Space revealed its clients Jan. 26 for its first privately-funded and operated mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Called Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), the flight is arranged under a commercial agreement with NASA.

Slated to launch on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft are Larry Connor, an American real estate and technology entrepreneur; Eytan Stibbe, a businessman and former Israeli fighter pilot; Mark Pathy, a Canadian investor and philanthropist; and Michael Lopez-Alegria, a retired NASA astronaut with nearly 260 days in space already across four missions.

In June, SpaceX and Axiom announced an agreement to fly three more missions to the orbiting complex after Ax-1. NASA officially cleared the Ax-1 crew for flight on Dec. 20.

2) Starship launches test flight and sticks the landing

After several attempts on previous test landing that didn’t make it safely to landing, SpaceX’s Starship SN-15 prototype launched its own test flight May 5 and made it all the way from takeoff to touchdown. 

The uncrewed test flight coincidentally fell on the 60th anniversary of the United States’ first-ever crewed spaceflight, which saw NASA astronaut Alan Shepard make it to suborbital space. SpaceX has said it hopes to use Starship to branch out in the solar system, especially for crewed Mars missions.

3) Virgin Galactic launches Richard Branson

On July 11, Virgin Galactic launched its first operational tourist flight, featuring founder Richard Branson. It was “the experience of a lifetime,” Branson said during a live broadcast of the flight. 

The four-person crew and two pilots of the Unity 22 test flight mission took off from the company’s Spaceport America facility in New Mexico and flew just above the boundary of space, where everyone experienced about four minutes of weightlessness. 

Future flights of Virgin Galactic, though, have been delayed due to a Federal Aviation Administration investigation into a reported incident that happened during the spaceflight. That said, Virgin has opened up tickets again to paying spaceflyers, now at $450,000 apiece.

4) Blue Origin launches Jeff Bezos to space

Days after the Virgin flight, Blue Origin launched its first crewed spaceflight on July 20, featuring founder Jeff Bezos and a set of other three space tourists, including Mercury 13 aviator Wally Funk. 

Since the system flies autonomously, no pilots were required to be on board (although Funk is highly qualified as an aviator) as the New Shepard system lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One near the West Texas town of Van Horn.

While Bezos and Branson denied their companies were in competition, the broadcast of Bezos’ flight made several cutting remarks about the company flying above the Kármán line, an internationally recognized boundary of spaceflight that Virgin Galactic flights don’t reach. 

Bezos also said in an interview in July that Blue Origin is not focused on competition, but building a “road to space.” The company has adopted that catchphrase as a tagline and repeats it frequently during live broadcasts.

5) SpaceX stacks tallest booster ever with Starship

SpaceX’s newest Starship prototype (SN-20) perched on its massive Super Heavy booster for the first time on Friday (Aug. 6), briefly setting a new record for the world’s tallest rocket during preparations for an orbital mission.

The hour-long fit check brought the stack to 395 feet tall (120 m), taller than NASA’s massive Saturn V moon rocket, which was 363 feet tall (110 m). Super Heavy alone stands 230 feet (70 meters) tall and Starship SN4 includes another 165 feet (50 m) of height. 

The next major milestone for Starship is the orbital launch that may take place in 2022, pending an environmental review by the Federal Aviation Administration and related government groups. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has pushed back launch estimates several times due to the review.

6) Inspiration4 launches 4 civilians on first orbital mission

Billionaire Jared Isaacman’s privately chartered spaceflight launched on Sept. 15, 2021 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, flying high in Earth orbit on a nearly three-day mission. Inspiration4 was the first crewed orbital mission with no professional astronauts on board (as the Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights preceding it were all suborbital missions.)

Isaacman, a pilot, commanded the flight and was accompanied by physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux, data engineer Chris Sembroski, and geoscientist and science communication specialist Sian Proctor. Sembroski and Proctor won their seats in contests to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, while Arceneaux is employed at that hospital.

Resilience and its crew circled Earth for three days, splashing down off the Florida coast on Sept. 18. The mission exceeded its fundraising goal for St. Jude.

7) Blue Origin launches William Shatner

A “Star Trek” star boldly went into suborbital space Oct. 13 on Blue Origin’s second crewed space mission, called NS-18. William Shatner, 90, is best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk on “Star Trek: The Original Series.”

“That was unlike anything they described,” Shatner was heard saying via a radio link as the capsule parachuted back to Earth, after carrying him and three other crew members to suborbital space.

Shatner is now the oldest person to have ever flown to space, beating the record set by Wally Funk, 82, who flew on Blue Origin’s first crewed flight July 20. Crew member Glen de Vries died in a plane crash weeks after the flight and Blue Origin dedicated their next crewed mission in December to him.

8) Russian film crew shoots drama on ISS

Just days after Shatner’s ride to space, a Russian film crew including actress Yulia Peresild and producer Klim Shipenko landed with cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian federal space corporation Roscosmos on Oct. 17.

“Вызов” (“Challenge” in English) is the movie in production. It follows the fictional story of a surgeon (Peresild) who is launched to the station to perform emergency surgery on a cosmonaut (Novitskiy, who would play the role well given he is a cosmonaut in real life.)

The effort is a joint production of Roscosmos, the Russian television station Channel One and the studio Yellow, Black and White. Given the small crew on hand in space, Shipenko took on several behind-the-scenes roles, including director, make-up artist, sound editor and cinematographer. 

9) Blue Origin launches ‘Good Morning America’ host to space

Blue Origin’s next (and likely last) crewed flight of 2021 filled out all six seats in the New Shepard spacecraft during a successful launch and landing Dec. 11. The starring guest was Michael Strahan, host of “Good Morning America”, who is a retired football player. (The crew threw mini-footballs in space to celebrate his past career.)

Strahan said the experience was amazing. “I want to go back,” he told Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos after returning to Earth. “Touchdown has a new meaning now!!!” he wrote on Twitter after the flight.

Also on the flight was Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, the daughter of NASA astronaut Shepard after whom the New Shepard system is named, and four other individuals who paid for their seats. Blue Origin has not yet released per-seat pricing for customers, and we are also awaiting details on their next planned crew launch.

10) Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa flies to ISS

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, video producer Yozo Hirano and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin launched on Dec. 8 to the International Space Station for a 12-day mission to the orbiting lab.

Maezawa is also planning to fly around the moon on a SpaceX mission that he paid for, tentatively slotted for 2023, but chose to visit the space station as well on a mission brokered by the U.S. space tourism company Space Adventures with Russia’s Roscosmos space agency. It was not revealed how much Maezawa paid for the flight, but single seats in the past have cost up to $35 million. And Maezawa bought two seats, one for himself and for Hirano, who recorded videos of Maezawa in space.

Maezawa, the CEO of Start Today and the founder of online clothing retailer ZOZO, bought the seats for himself and Hirano. Hirano documented the mission and participate in some health and performance research. They also made the first Uber Eats delivery in space on the flight. The trio returned to Earth on Dec. 19.

And that’s a wrap at the biggest space tourism moments in 2021. The year 2022 is expected to bring more milestones as the company Axiom Space plans to launch its first fully private crew to the International Space Station early in the year, with SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic all expected to continue their private spaceflight pace. 

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook. 

At the core of my soul, I want to hate BioLite’s FirePit+, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t my favorite gadget I’ve used this year.

You see, I’m a person who appreciates simplicity, and you don’t get any more simple than fire. You can essentially start one anywhere (not recommended), no fancy equipment required. So when it comes to firepits, my gut reaction is to favor the “it’s a firepit because there’s a circle of rocks on the ground” variety. Even the over-priced junk-steel firepits—the round kind that you can buy pretty much anywhere—feel preferable to anything fancier. God forbid someone introduce rechargeable batteries into the equation.

And then I tried the FirePit+.

At $250, it costs exactly $250 more than I spent putting rocks into a circle in my backyard, but having used it for several months now, I can say it’s easily worth that much or more. No other gadget I’ve used in recent memory has been as satisfying to use nor inspired my friends and family to rush out and spend some cash.

Solid, Compact, and Portable Construction

The BioLite FirePit+ (the company’s second-generation firepit) promises more than just toasted marshmallows and something to help you tell better ghost stories. At its heart is a small fan powered by a 12,800 mAh battery, which easily clips on and off one end of the firepit, and is meant to make starting a fire easier and—most importantly—keep the smoke out of your eyes. The fan box also includes two ports, one for charging the battery with a micro-USB cable and a standard USB port for charging your phone or whatever else.

Altogether, the FirePit+ is roughly the size of a medium-sized cooler and weighs about 20 pounds—hefty, but small and light enough to pack in the trunk for an overnight camping trip or a parking lot cookout at the ski slopes. Measuring about 17.5 inches long and around 7 inches wide (from the inside of the lip), the fire cavity (the actual pit part of the FirePit+) easily allows for standard-size (16-inch) logs, and there’s nothing stopping you from cramming some longer ones in there if you don’t mind them sticking out the top.

The long sides are made of attractive black metal mesh, so you can still see the flames inside, and it has handles on either end for portability. It also has four foldable legs, a log grate in the bottom to allow air all around the burning wood or charcoal, and a removable grate on top for grilling whatever you like.

Not Quite ‘Smokeless’—but Pretty Dang Close

The fan, which has four speeds, promises to all but eliminate the worst part of firepits: all that freakin’ smoke blowing in your face, no matter where around it you happen to sit. And it actually works! No, it doesn’t create a “smoke-free” fire—but it’s pretty darn close.

Here’s how the fan works: Levels 3 and 4, the highest fan speed settings, blow enough air into the fire cavity to give the flame ample oxygen to get going. Honestly, this feature is a little like magic: The fire starts so easily it makes you look like a goddamn Boy Scout. Even when the sticks and wood have been a bit damp, the fire was going nice and healthy within a matter of minutes. Levels 2 and 3 will keep a fire going strong while eliminating nearly all of the smoke. And level 1 lets the fire burn easily, but you’ll probably get a bit of smoke whirling around, mocking you.

Now, if you start a fire like me (using crumpled-up newspaper), the FirePit+ is not powerful enough to eliminate all the smoke during start-up—paper simply smokes way too much, even with the fan whirring at level 4. But once only wood is burning, I am continuously surprised by how very little smoke whirls around to pester me and my guests.

Battery Life for Days

Mercifully, the FirePit+ does not screw around with companion apps or anything annoying like that. Instead, it sticks with tried-and-true buttons—or, rather, button. There’s just one. Press it once to start the fan, then click it again until you have the fan speed you want. Hold and press to turn it off. That’s it.

In terms of battery life, BioLite promises 30 hours on the lowest setting and 7 hours on the highest. When I attempted to conduct my own tests, I basically failed—the first time, I fell asleep before the fan shut off on level 4. The second time, I gave up after more than 7 hours had gone by and I needed to go to sleep. So, I don’t have any specific battery life figures to give you. But based on real use, I can say it has not in the past six months run out of battery while I’ve been enjoying some backyard flames. (Side note: Absolutely no one should use this thing exclusively set to level 4—you will just burn through an entire stack of logs because it acts like a freakin’ incinerator when the fan is set that high.) Most of the time, I had it set to level 2, which gave me enough juice for multiple hours-long outdoor get-togethers.

Beyond the basic FirePit+, BioLite also sells a few accessories, including a cast iron griddle that spans the top of the fire cavity, a BBQ lid, and a set of cooking utensils (knife, tongs, spatula), all of which the company included in the review kit I received (retail: $400, including the FirePit+). You don’t need any of this stuff to enjoy the FirePit+, but I will say it all came in handy during a camping trip this summer when I wanted to cook up some scrambled eggs and sausages for me and my friends in the morning.

Less Smoke = Less Heat

There are only three things I dislike about the FirePit+. First, the downside to eliminating smoke is that it also reduces the amount of heat the fire emits to the sides. I admit I’m not 100% sure about the physics behind the smoke-reducing fan, but there is noticeably less warmth coming from the FirePit+ when the fan is set to anything above level 2. This doesn’t matter if you just have a fire going for ambiance. But during the winter months when we’re all hanging out exclusively outdoors because of the never-ending pandemic, heat becomes far more important—which just means you might want to stick to level 1 and endure a bit more smoke.

Second, I have to care about this thing, which is annoying. I have two other firepits, one that’s just some rocks in a circle, and the other is one of those aforementioned crappy circular pressed-steel ones that are everywhere now. Neither do I have to care about—I don’t bring them into the garage to ensure they don’t get rained on, nor do I fret when they show a little wear and tear. The FirePit+ is different—it’s nice. And while I’ve definitely left it out in the rain a few times without any consequence, it’s still a piece of equipment I feel the need to take care of, which bothers someone like me who doesn’t want the things I have to dictate my brain-space.

Third, it’s a little small. This is both a positive and a negative. Positive because it’s just the right size to make it portable while not being so small that you can’t make it your main firepit, especially if you have limited outdoor space. Negative because, well, sometimes you just want to make a big-ass bonfire—a real raging inferno—and this thing just ain’t gonna cut it. But that’s also not what it’s made for, so I can’t really dock the thing for not being the size of a small car, which is approximately how big I like my fires to be from time to time.

The FirePit+ Is Almost Too Nice—Almost

As I said, I didn’t want to like the FirePit+. But I truly do, despite myself. It’s portable, sturdy, and works better than I expected. It may not be 100% “smokeless”—but it’s far closer to smokeless than even BioLite itself promises. It’s held up well for months despite my haphazard care. In fact, it works so well and looks so good, both my friends and my brother got one for themselves after using it at my house. I’ve taken it on camping trips and set it up in my yard and on my deck. And while I can gripe about a loss of heat or the fact that I have to pop it in the garage or shed to protect it from the elements, sometimes that’s the price we have to pay to have nice things.

For this year’s Tokyo Auto Salon, Nissan is bringing a variety of vehicles to show, but possibly the most impressive are these camper vans. They’re based on the NV350 Caravan, and they’re hiding some truly incredible-looking living quarters.

The all-around most impressive one is the Mountain Base concept, shown at top. It’s hard to miss thanks to its faux wood trim all along the sides. Closer inspection reveals the parts that don’t have wood-grain vinyl are coated in some sort of truck bedliner material. The front fascia has a sort of integrated grille and headlight guard. The roof is adorned with an off-road light bar and a gigantic solar panel that can be raised, angled and swiveled to get in the optimum position. The side windows have also been replaced in favor of more solar panels. Fender flares enclose a chunky off-road wheel and tire combination.

The interior is the big draw, though. A big bench and worktop with screens fills most of it, with all the surfaces covered in wood paneling. And all those surfaces are supported by an intricate, skeletal-looking structure. Lighting is mounted inside and around these areas providing a modern and stylish environment. Adding some warm ambiance is a TV screen used as a virtual fireplace.

Though not as striking on the outside, the Caravan Myroom concept is still highly impressive. The outside is pretty much unchanged except for a custom brown and white color scheme and black painted steel wheels.

The interior is perfect for high-style camping, though. It’s full of modern-looking furnishings such as cabinets and shelves in light wood finishes. The windows have stylish slats, and the fold-up bed is covered in lovely gray and brown textiles. Additional storage is under the bed, and a couch is fitted for lounging.

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Researchers have discovered a total of nine software vulnerabilities in a commonly used metal detector. If exploited, the security flaws could allow a hacker to take detectors offline, read or alter their data, or just generally mess with their functionality, the research reveals.

The product in question is produced by Garrett , a well-known U.S.-based metal detector manufacturer that sells its product to schools, court houses, prisons, airports, sports and entertainment venues, and an assortment of government buildings, according to its website and other sites. In other words, their products are pretty much everywhere.

Unfortunately, according to researchers with Cisco Talos, Garrett’s widely used iC module is in trouble. The product, which provides network connectivity to two of the company’s popular walk-through detectors (the Garrett PD 6500i and the Garrett MZ 6100), basically acts as a control center for the detector’s human operator: using a laptop or other interface, an operator can use the module to remotely control a detector, as well as engage in “real-time monitoring and diagnostics,” according to a website selling the product.

In a blog post published Tuesday, Talos researchers said that the vulnerabilities in iC, which are officially being tracked as a bevy of CVEs, could allow for somebody to hack into specific metal detectors, knock them offline, execute arbitrary code, and generally just make a real mess of things.

“An attacker could manipulate this module to remotely monitor statistics on the metal detector, such as whether the alarm has been triggered or how many visitors have walked through,” researchers write. “They could also make configuration changes, such as altering the sensitivity level of a device, which potentially poses a security risk to users who rely on these metal detectors.”

In short: This is bad news. Generally speaking, nobody really wants to walk through a metal detector. But, if you’re going to walk through one, it might as well work, right? While the scenarios in which an attacker would actually go to the trouble to hack into these systems seem slim to probably fantastical, having functional security systems at important locations like airports and government agencies seems like a good idea.

Fortunately, Talos says that users of these devices can mitigate the security flaws by updating their iC modules to the latest version of its firmware. Cisco apparently disclosed the vulnerabilities to Garrett in August and the vendor just fixed the flaws on Dec. 13, Talos writes.

We reached out to Garrett’s security division for comment and will update this story if they respond.

Attempts at recreating the hoverboards seen in Back to the Future II have so far been either disappointing self-balancing, two-wheeled vehicles that frequently catch fire, or jet-powered floating platforms that require a highly skilled pilot. But as MIT engineers have recently proposed, creating a levitating vehicle might not be so difficult if we all just lived on the moon.

Most of the highly maneuverable flying vehicles that have been created thus far are completely dependent on Earth’s atmosphere to take to the skies. The wings of planes need air to generate lift, while propellers need air to generate thrust. Rockets don’t need an atmosphere to propel themselves or a craft—that’s how we were able to send humans to the moon and return them safely to Earth—but as reusable vehicles they require considerable servicing and refueling efforts after a flight before they can be used again.

This is why we tend to rely on wheeled vehicles for exploring other celestial bodies that don’t have enough of an atmosphere to support flight. But a rover endures a lot of wear and tear rolling across a barren, rocky terrain, even when operated at limited speeds for safety reasons. Taking to the skies, as the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars can, is a safer way to explore another planet or celestial objects like asteroids at higher speeds to greatly increase their range of exploration, but that’s not an option on places like the moon.

Not having an atmosphere isn’t necessarily a problem, and, in fact, could actually be an advantage. It leaves the surface of the moon directly exposed to the sun, which causes it to build up an electric field that’s strong enough to make dust particles actually float (not unlike the effects of static electricity on the hair of a volunteer at a science center). The surface charges aren’t quite strong enough to keep a tiny, lightweight aircraft afloat against the pull of the moon’s gravity, but MIT engineers have come up with another approach to “generate a relatively large repulsive force between the vehicle and the ground” that could allow a rover as heavy as 2 pounds to levitate across the lunar surface.

Getting a larger craft to levitate on the moon would rely on a two-part strategy. The first would be equipping the vehicle with miniature ion thrusters connected to a reservoir of room temperature molten salt. When a small voltage is applied to the molten salt, “the liquid’s ions are charged and emitted as a beam through the nozzles with a certain force.” It’s an idea that’s already been used to propel small spacecraft in space where gravitational forces are minimal. To make a small craft levitate over the surface of the moon, which still experiences one-sixth of the gravity of Earth, the MIT engineers crunched the numbers and concluded that additional thrusters could be added to shoot out positive ions which would increase the electrical charge of the moon’s surface, and, in turn, generate a stronger force pushing up against the levitating rover.

A minimal amount of power would be needed to levitate a 2-pound rover roughly one centimeter above the moon’s surface, and to test the idea, the researchers created a lightweight (about 60 grams) palm-sized test vehicle in a lab with one ion thruster pointing up to simulate the moon’s gravity, four pointing down to counteract it, and other components, including two springs “calibrated to counteract Earth’s gravitational force,” to best recreate the conditions on the moon. The results of the experiment matched the expected theoretical outcomes, but the researchers believe a levitating rover powered this way could potentially float even higher, or potentially be built heavier with additional scientific instrumentation on board.

The ultimate goal is to come up with a rover that takes advantage of the unique conditions on moons and asteroids in our solar system to make it easier to explore and maneuver over unknown terrains by simply floating right over them—eliminating the added complications of wheeled vehicles altogether. Does it mean that if and when astronauts return to the moon they’ll be zipping from crater to crater on hoverboards? Levitating a two-pound rover is a considerably easier task than lifting a 180-pound astronaut wearing a 280-pound space suit, but this new approach has yet to be actually tested on our celestial neighbor, so it remains to be seen just how far the technology could be pushed. What we do know is that there are at least no large bodies of water on the moon to foil an exciting hoverboard chase.