Real Space Cowboys

Do you have to live in Texas to be a Space Cowboy? A lot of private space companies now have a large presence in Texas. Perhaps this idea goes back to the 1960's during the early days of the Space Race with the creation of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center and John F. Kennedy's We Choose to Go to the Moon speech at Rice University in Houston Texas.

SpaceX tests their rocket engines in McGregor, Texas and launches Starship in Boca Chica, Texas in the Rio Grande Valley. Firefly Aerospace is based outside of Austin in Cedar Park, Texas and tests engines near Bertram, Texas. Blue Origin has been launching New Shepard at Launch Site One in West Texas. Check out this link for the recent NS-15 launch and don't miss this video of Ms. Caitlin Dietrich touring Blue Origin's Launch Site One, which will soon send astronauts up into space from Van Horn, Texas - initiating a new era of Space Cowboys.

I also love that Blue Origin is helping children understand that space is truly accessible to everyone. Blue Origin's Club for the Future aims to inspire youth to pursue careers in STEM and help visualize the future of life in space to benefit Earth. Your first mission (if you choose to accept it) asks kids to send a postcard to space.

My postcard was flown on NS-14 on January 14, 2021 and was returned to me in February. Working with the Loukoumi Foundation, I plan to collaborate with Club for the Future to have other children send postcards to space.

The catch is that 1) we will be sending positive or inspirational messages into space and 2) instead of having the postcards returned to the sender, they would be sent to a grandparent or a patient at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or a resident in a senior living facility through 3 Wishes for Ruby's Residents - really anyone that would appreciate a simple note after being isolated for the past year due to the pandemic. Please join me in sharing inspirational messages to someone who could really use them. In fact, if that someone is you, please send me a note and I will make sure that you receive a postcard.

“If you come together with a mission, and its grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make the impossible possible.” – Congressman John Lewis

Updated March 2023

I have recently learned that my postcards were launched on NS-23, which encountered a launch failure on September 12, 2022. The good news is that no crew were aboard this spacecraft and that the escape system jettisoned the capsule to land safely without damage. Blue Origin expects to launch the recovered payloads in a re-flight soon. Keep checking your mail, as you may receive a postcard flown to space soon.

#BlueOrigin #ClubForTheFuture #NS15 #EarthNeedsSpace

Space for Art

Space for Art or Art for Space? That is the question.

I recently had a chance to attend a webinar featuring Chris Calle (son of Paul Calle whose sketch of Buzz Aldrin suiting up for Apollo 11 is pictured above) on NASA's Art Program, created in 1962. The program was the creation of NASA Administrator James Webb (think Webb telescope - a future blog discussion) to document and create portraits of the original Mercury Seven astronauts. Eight artists were invited to the NASA Art Program which included Paul Calle, Lamar Dodd, Peter Hurd, Mitchell Jamieson, Robert T. McCall, John W. McCoy, Robert Shore, and George Weymouth.

Over the years, the program has included artists such as Annie Leibowitz, Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol and William Wegman, among many others. I really like this painting of Skyway by Robert Rauschenberg in the Dallas Museum of Art collection and will seek it out each time I visit.

I expect that the NASA Art Program inspired other artists. One of my favorite artists who muse about space is Tom Sachs (pictured below) who created the Tea Ceremony exhibition. I had the chance to see Tea Ceremony at the Nasher Sculpture Center and even met Tom Sachs at The Great Create and filmmaker/tea master Johnny Fogg at a tea ceremony. I have included a link of Tea Ceremony filmed at the Noguchi Museum in NYC.

I had the chance to visit The Contemporary Austin - Laguna Gloria in March 2021 and saw two Tom Sachs sculptures in the garden including Miffy Fountain, a silicon bronze sculpture of the popular Dutch bunny character that appears to be crying (tears of joy, I think) and Tower of Power, a pillar of cast bronze car batteries. Thanks to Spread & Co., I also enjoyed a very nice Matcha Latte in the garden as a celebration to Tom Sachs. Cheers!

I look forward to the next generation of artists who will participate in NASA's Art Program by documenting the Artemis Missions with astronauts flying on the Orion spacecraft and SLS. I cannot help to wonder which artists will fill the space boots of artists before them.

#NasherSculptureCenter #DallasMuseumofArt #TheContemporaryAustin #TomSachs #RobertRauschenberg #PaulCalle #ARTemis

Mission(s) to Mars

Have you recently noticed a lot of news stories on the planet Mars? Over the next week, there will be three missions to Mars represented by the UAE, China and USA.

The first space probe to arrive to the red planet was launched by the UAE. The Hope probe launched on a HII-A rocket from Tanegashima spaceport on July 19, 2020. Hope arrived in Mars orbit seven months later on February 9, 2021 in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the formation of the United Arab Emirates to occur later his year.

On February 10, China's Tianwen-1 arrived in Mars orbit. Fun fact: The name Tianwen means "Questions to Heaven" taken from a poem written by Qu Yuan between 340 and 278 BCE. The spacecraft launched on July 23, 2020 aboard a Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket and will orbit Mars for a few months before landing a rover on the Mars surface (likely in May 2021 because this is top secret).

Over the next week, NASA's Perseverance (noun - persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success) is scheduled to arrive at Mars' Jezero Crater on February 18. The seven month journey will end as the spacecraft passes though Mars' atmosphere in what is called the "Seven Minutes of Terror" as Perseverance slows down from its speed of 12,000 mph. During this time, scientists will not know whether the rover has landed safely on the Mars surface. I think you will enjoy this computer animation of the landing as seen in this link from Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). Perseverance traveled aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on July 30, 2020.

Are you seeing a pattern in that all of these spacecraft launched in July 2020 and arrived in February 2021? You might say that the planets were in alignment for these three nations, but the real reason is that Mars and Earth were closest to each other during their journeys around the sun, which allowed the spacecraft to arrive in the quickest amount of time. It has truly been a space race as these countries are arriving at their destination 120 million miles away within a week of each other. All things considered, this was a very close race.

#HopeforHope #NASA #Tianwen #JPL #ULA #Mars