LIVE: Astronauts prepare for ISS visit and farming on the moon
SPACE (KXAN) — A quartet of astronauts from around the world are making final preparations to visit the International Space Station.
Private space company Axiom Space will launch Axiom Ax-4 on June 11. The mission, carried out using a SpaceX Dragon capsule and launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, will take Commander Peggy Whitson, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla from India, ESA Project Astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Poland, and Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu from Hungary to the ISS.
This will be the first time astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary will visit the ISS.
'We won't have a lot of time for personal activities on launch day. It's pretty scripted out. We'll be getting up at a specific time, have breakfast, and then head to the Kennedy Space Center. I've told these guys it's very much a hurry up and wait kind of day,' says Whitson to the Associated Press.
Commander Whitson is a former NASA astronaut and the Director of Human Spaceflight with Axiom Space. Shukla is India's second national astronaut since 1984.
'I am carrying a few delicacies from India. You know, we have a very rich culinary culture, and so a few of the items that I'm carrying are mango nectar. I'm also carrying moong dal halwa and carrot halwa. Some of them are my favorites and I am so happy to be able to carry them, share them with my colleagues and also the astronauts who are on the station right now,' he says.
The mission will last two weeks. During that time, the crew will study diabetes management in microgravity.
'We're very excited about testing that on board, and you may not know, but a person with diabetes can't fly in space because it's disqualifying and not considered to be safe because we wouldn't know how their bodies would respond. If we have the appropriate technology to monitor the individuals, we feel that we can open up that door and that path for a lot of folks in the world and just open up space a little bit more,' says Whitson.
The flight is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center at 7 a.m. CST.
In other space news, Texas A&M AgriLife is looking to farm on the moon. Jess Atkin is a doctoral student looking to turn moon dust into a usable soil.
She plans to do this using fungi designed to enrich the moon dust, called regolith. Early tests focused on growing chickpeas in simulated lunar soil.
NASA awarded Atkin a $150,000 grant to continue her research.
The Blue Danube Waltz is now playing on radio waves beyond our solar system. On May 31, the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra performed the piece, composed by Johann Strauss II, and beamed the music into space.
The European Space Agency's big radio antenna transmitted the song towards Voyager I. Voyager I is located 15 billion miles away. When launched in 1977, the spacecraft contained a golden record with music on it. Strauss was not included.
The concert and transmission were meant to celebrate the ESA's 50th anniversary and the 200th birthday of Strauss.
Finally, China launched a mission to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid. Tianwen 2 left Earth on May 29.
The mission is aiming for asteroid 2016HO3. The China National Space Administration said a probe launched from the rocket towards the asteroid 18 minutes after launch.
The mission is scheduled to take more than a decade.
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