Since 1955 the U.S./Canadian operation that monitors North American airspace with radars and satellite to maintain air sovereignty has also, at Christmas time, been tracking Santa.

And this year their trackers received additional support from the U.S. Space Command, a joint-military command drawing its units from five military service branches (including the U.S. Space Force). That command "launched a new reindeer tracker to pinpoint the exact location of Santa's sleigh at any given time during the night," according to NPR's Morning Edition, with General James Dickinson telling them the equipment's official name: Rudolph Infrared Tracking System. "We made some upgrades this year."

And that was just the beginning, reports The Hill: Santa knows astronauts need presents, too, and made his first known visit to the International Space Station to deliver them this year.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which tracks Santa's Christmas Eve journey every year, depicted in a tweet Santa arriving at the International Space Station on Christmas Eve...

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared Santa for the flight to space on Wednesday, providing him "for the first time ever" with a special commercial space license.
The astronauts aboard the ISS recorded a special Christmas video this year. (And a new article in Business Insider expores how astronauts on the space station have celebrated Christmas over the years.)

And NORAD is even maintaining a special web site at NORADSanta.org which not only let visitors track Santa, but through December 31st will also offer an arcade with Christmas-themed videogames, a selection of music by the U.S. Air Force Academy Band, and even a gift shop where you can buy "Santa and NORAD gear," including NORAD hoodies and tote bags.

Though a pop-up window warns visitors that "Clicking through to this next website does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the United States Department of Defense or NORAD of any product or service."

During the Great Conjunction event in which Jupiter and Saturn appeared closer to each other in the sky than they have for hundreds of years, photographer Jason De Freitas captured a photo showing the ISS zipping between the two planets. PetaPixel reports: While planning to photograph the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, De Freitas realized that he could also include the ISS in the frame. "I had the incredible luck of figuring out I could see the path of the International Space Station traveling through the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction," De Freitas says. After a great deal of planning, on December 17th, De Freitas drove an hour -- "quite a short distance in the scheme of things," he says -- to a location where everything would be aligned perfectly for his shot.

At around 9:54pm from Jellore Lookout in New South Wales, Australia, De Freitas pointed his Pentax 67 and Takumar 600mm f/4 at the planets and captured a 10-second exposure on Fujifilm Provia 100f film. The tracking was done with a Skywatcher NEQ6 equatorial mount. The photo above is what resulted. Here's a closer crop in which you can more clearly see the planets and Jupiter's moons. De Freitas also used a Nikon D750 and Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 to capture digital video of the event. "Probably the most unique shot I've ever taken," De Freitas says. "[S]omehow everything on the night worked out. Beyond thrilled with this one.

Four astronauts aboard their SpaceX Dragon capsule "Resilience" have arrived at the International Space Station, circling 262 miles above the Earth, where they will stay until spring. From a report: The capsule lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center Sunday evening atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, chasing the ISS for 27 hours before matching its altitude and speed for an orbital dock. The flight marks only the second crewed flight for Crew Dragon, which became the first commercial vehicle to put humans in orbit when astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken launched in May. "SpaceX, this is Resilience. Excellent job, right down the center," commander Hopkins radioed to mission control after the docking. "SpaceX and NASA, congratulations." The flight marks another milestone for SpaceX flying its first fully operational mission. After the May launch, designated "Demo-2" with Hurley and Behnken, NASA certified the capsule for operational use in its Commercial Crew program. The Resilience crew includes three NASA astronauts and one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who were mostly passengers during the flight of Crew Dragon, which generally flies without human input and docks to the ISS autonomously.

Axiom Space has signed three private astronauts to join former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-AlegrÃa on Ax-1, the first private mission into orbit and to the International Space Station. From a report: In March, Axiom Space announced plans to launch "history's first fully private human spaceflight mission to the International Space Station." The mission, dubbed Ax-1, would go forward using SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle to deliver private astronauts to the ISS for at least eight days. At the International Astronautical Congress last month, Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini said the company was aiming to launch in the fourth quarter of 2021. Details are still sparse. We know that former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-AlegrÃa will be part of the mission, but the three other astronauts have not been announced yet. The promotional image Axiom posted Wednesday features three male silhouettes, suggesting there will be no female astronauts on board. There is some excitable chatter on Twitter and other places suggesting that two of the other astronauts might be actor Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman, who have been in talks with NASA about filming a movie on the ISS. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine mentioned in June that Axiom was involved in those talks.

Since 2000, there have always been humans living and working on the International Space Station -- and the streak could just be getting started. National Geographic reports: On Halloween in the year 2000, a Russian Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and flew into the history books, carrying one U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to the nascent International Space Station (ISS). The crew arrived two days later, and the space station has been continuously occupied by humans ever since, a 20-year streak of living and working in low-Earth orbit. "There's kids now who are in college who, for their entire lives, we've been living off the planet," says Kenny Todd, NASA's deputy program manager for the ISS. "When I was a kid, that was all stuff that was just dreams."

The orbiting laboratory is among the most expensive and technologically complex objects ever built: a $150-billion pressurized habitat as long as a football field, whizzing 254 miles above Earth's surface at 17,000 miles an hour. Over the decades, 241 women and men from around the world have temporarily called the space station home, some for nearly a full year at a time. "It's pretty crazy -- I'm surprised we haven't, like, really seriously hurt anybody," says retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a year on one ISS stay. "It's really a testament to the seriousness [with which] people on the ground take this job, the attention to detail."

Upward of a hundred thousand people have worked together to design, build, launch, and operate the sprawling station, says David Nixon, who worked with NASA on ISS designs in the mid-1980s. "When you compare the station to the procession of great structures and buildings built by humanity since the dawn of civilization, it's up there with the Pyramids, the Acropolis -- all the great structures and edifices," he says. The future of the ISS remains uncertain. "The station is currently slated to run until at least 2024, and much of its hardware is certified to operate safely until at least 2028, if not longer for its younger components," the report notes.

"Will the ISS be disassembled and scavenged in orbit to construct a future space station? Will it be turned over to private companies as nations venture farther into space? Will the whole structure go out in a final blaze of glory, steered into a Pacific crash landing like the Russian space station Mir?"

"TCP/IP doesn't work at interplanetary distances," 77-year-old Vinton Cerf tells Quanta magazine. "So we designed a set of protocols that do." Specifically, bundle protocols: a disruption/delay-tolerant networking (DTN) protocol with nodes that can also store information: A data packet traveling from Earth to Jupiter might, for example, go through a relay on Mars, Cerf explained. However, when the packet arrives at the relay, some 40 million miles into the 400-million-mile journey, Mars may not be oriented properly to send the packet on to Jupiter. "Why throw the information away, instead of hanging on to it until Jupiter shows up?" Cerf said. This store-and-forward feature allows bundles to navigate toward their destinations one hop at a time, despite large disruptions and delays...

So, a couple decades after conceiving of bundle protocols, is the interplanetary internet up and running?

We don't have to build the whole thing and then hope somebody uses it. We sought to get standards in place, as we have for the internet; offer those standards freely; and then achieve interoperability so that the various spacefaring nations could help each other. We're taking the next obvious step for multi-mission infrastructure: designing the capability for an interplanetary backbone network. You build what's needed for the next mission. As spacecraft get built and deployed, they carry the standard protocols that become part of the interplanetary backbone. Then, when they finish their primary scientific mission, they get repurposed as nodes in the backbone network. We accrete an interplanetary backbone over time.

In 2004, the Mars rovers were supposed to transmit data back to Earth directly through the deep space network — three big 70-meter antennas in Australia, Spain and California. However, the channel's available data rate was 28 kilobits per second, which isn't much. When they turned the radios on, they overheated. They had to back off, which meant less data would come back. That made the scientists grumpy. One of the JPL engineers used prototype software — this is so cool! — to reprogram the rovers and orbiters from hundreds of millions of miles away. We built a small store-and-forward interplanetary internet with essentially three nodes: the rovers on the surface of Mars, the orbiters and the deep space network on Earth. That's been running ever since.

We've been refining the design of those protocols, implementing and testing them. The latest protocols are running back-and-forth relays between Earth and the International Space Station... We did another test at the ISS where the astronauts were controlling a little robot vehicle in Germany.

NASA's first new space potty in decades -- a $23 million titanium toilet better suited for women -- is getting a not-so-dry run at the International Space Station before eventually flying to the moon. The Associated Press reports: Barely 100 pounds (45 kilograms) and just 28 inches (71 centimeters) tall, the new toilet is roughly half as big as the two Russian-built ones at the space station. It's more camper-size to fit into the NASA Orion capsules that will carry astronauts to the moon in a few years. Station residents will test it out for a few months. If the shakedown goes well, the toilet will be open for regular business. The old toilets cater more toward men. To better accommodate women, NASA tilted the seat on the new toilet and made it taller. The new shape should help astronauts position themselves better for No. 2, said Johnson Space Center's Melissa McKinley, the project manager. "Cleaning up a mess is a big deal. We don't want any misses or escapes," she said.

As for No. 1, the funnels also have been redesigned. Women can use the elongated and scooped-out funnels to urinate while sitting on the commode to poop at the same time, McKinley said. Until now, it's been one or the other for female astronauts, she noted. Like earlier space commodes, air suction, rather than water and gravity, removes the waste. Urine collected by the new toilet will be routed into NASA's long-standing recycling system to produce water for drinking and cooking. Titanium and other tough alloys were chosen for the new toilet to withstand all the acid in the urine pretreatment.

First, PetaPixel reminds us that Estee Lauder's products will be launching into space this week: The cosmetics giant Estee Lauder is paying NASA $128,000 for a product photography shoot onboard the International Space Station. Bloomberg reports that the company will be paying the space agency to fly 10 bottles of its Advanced Night Repair skin serum to the orbiting space station on a cargo run that will launch from Virginia on Tuesday and dock on Saturday. Once the product is on board, astronauts will be tasked with shooting product photos of the serum floating in the cupola module, which has sweeping panoramic views of Earth and space.

NASA charges a "professional fee" of $17,500 per hour for the astronauts' time.
In a possibly-related story, the same flight will also be carrying a new $23 million space toilet to the station as part of a routine resupply mission "to test it out before it's used on future missions to the moon or Mars."

With space junk piling up around our planet, the International Space Station needed to perform a last-minute avoidance maneuver Tuesday to steer clear of an "unknown piece of space debris expected to pass within several kilometers." From a report: Mission Control in Houston conducted the move at 2:19 p.m. PT using the Russian Progress resupply spacecraft docked to the ISS to help nudge the station out of harm's way. "Out of an abundance of caution, the Expedition 63 crew will relocate to their Soyuz spacecraft until the debris has passed by the station," NASA said in a statement prior to the move. The maneuver went off smoothly, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine reported. "The astronauts are coming out of safe haven," he tweeted after the ISS relocated.

CNN reports: A planned reality show will seek to give the winner of its on-air competition "the greatest prize ever given out on Earth" — a 10-day stay on the International Space Station...

The production company's press release said that the team is "now looking for global brand and primary distribution partners." Space Hero is planning to open the application process for the show in the first half of 2021 before broadcasting begins in 2022, a spokesperson said via email Friday... Space Hero, which is headed by a former News Corp executive named Marty Pompadur, said it is working with Texas-based startup Axiom Space to coordinate the trip into orbit.

Axiom was co-founded and led by Michael Suffredini, who led NASA's International Space Station Program from 2005 to 2015. The company plans to serve as a go-between for NASA, launch providers such as SpaceX and Boeing, and any private-sector individuals interested in booking rides to space for tourism, entertainment or other business purposes. Axiom has also said it can provide all the training necessary to prepare individuals for a trip to the ISS...

Private citizens have visited the space station before: A company called Space Adventures previously organized eight trips to the International Space Station for ultra-wealthy travelers between 2001 and 2009 using Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Allowing tourists and other private citizens to make use of the space station — via SpaceX's or Boeing's new spacecraft — is part of NASA's goal of commercializing outer space.
CNN notes that Axiom is also handling the training and coordination for that Tom Cruise movie that's going to be filmed in space.

NASA is preparing to oversee the largest push of business activity aboard the ISS. "Later this month, up to 10 bottles of a new Estee Lauder (EL) skincare serum will launch to the space station," reports CNN. "NASA astronauts are expected to film the items in the microgravity environment of the ISS and the company will be able to use that footage in ad campaigns or other promotional material." The details of those plans were first reported by New Scientist magazine. From the report: The Estee Lauder partnership will continue NASA's years-long push to encourage private-sector spending on space projects as the space agency looks to stretch its budget beyond the ISS and focus on taking astronauts back into deep space. Those efforts include allowing the space station to be used for marketing and entertainment purposes. The Estee Lauder products, a new formula of the company's "Advanced Night Repair" skin serum, are expected to launch aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft, tucked alongside 8,000 pounds of other cargo, experiments and supplies. NASA astronauts will be tasked with capturing "imagery and video" of the product. The astronauts themselves, however, won't be appearing in any cosmetics ads: The space agency's ethics policies strictly bar astronauts from appearing in marketing campaigns.

"SpaceX took another step forward Thursday in developing its next-generation Starship rocket, conducting the second short flight test of a prototype in the past month," reports CNBC: Starship prototype Serial Number 6, or SN6, took off from the launchpad at SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas. It gradually rose to about 500 feet above the ground before it returned back to land, touching down on a concrete area near the launchpad. The flight test appeared to be identical to the test SpaceX conducted of prototype SN5 on Aug. 5...

The company is developing Starship with the goal of launching cargo and as many as a 100 people at a time on missions to the Moon and Mars.

SpaceX has been steadily building multiple prototypes at a time at the company's growing facility in Boca Chica. While SpaceX's fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are partially reusable, Musk's goal is to make Starship fully reusable — envisioning a rocket that is more akin to a commercial airplane, with short turnaround times between flights where the only major cost is fuel. After SpaceX in May launched a pair of NASA astronauts in its first crewed mission, Musk pivoted the company's attention, declaring that the top SpaceX priority is now development of Starship. Musk said in an email obtained by CNBC that Starship's program must accelerate "dramatically and immediately..."

He expects Starship's first flight tests to orbit won't come until 2021, saying that SpaceX is in "uncharted territory."
Commenting on the test launch of the bulky spacecraft, Elon Musk tweeted "Turns out you can make anything fly haha."

CNBC reports: A Texas A&M professor was charged with conspiracy, making false statements and wire fraud on allegations that he was secretly collaborating with the Chinese government while conducting research for NASA, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said Monday...

"Once again, we have witnessed the criminal consequences that can arise from undisclosed participation in the Chinese government's talent program," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a statement. "The Department of Justice will continue seeking to bring participation in these talent programs to light and to expose the exploitation of our nation and our prized research institutions," he added. The DOJ has previously described China's Thousand Talents Plan as a tool of the Chinese Communist Party to "attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China's scientific development, economic prosperity and national security." Through this program, the Chinese government would "often reward individuals for stealing proprietary information," the DOJ said.

"While 1.4 million foreign researchers and academics are here in the U.S. for the right reasons, the Chinese Talents Program exploits our open and free universities," said Ryan Patrick, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, adding that ties to the Chinese government must be disclosed.
The criminal complaint accuses the professor of trying to "leverage NASA grant resources to further the research of Chinese institutions" and "gain access to the unique resources of the International Space Station."

NASA and Boeing have provided some updates around their Commercial Crew plans, which aim to get Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft certified for regular human flight. From a report: The CST-100 and Boeing's Commercial Crew aspirations hit a snag last year with a first attempt of an uncrewed orbital flight test, which did not go to plan thanks to a couple of software errors that led to an early mission ending, and a failure to reach the International Space Station as intended. In a blog post on Friday, NASA said that it and partner Boeing were aiming to fly the re-do of that uncrewed test no earlier than December 2020. This will involve flying the fully reusable Starliner CST-100 without anyone on board, in a live, fully automated simulation of how a launch with crew would go, including a rendezvous and docking with the ISS on orbit, and a return trip and controlled landing and capsule recovery. During the original OFT last December, the spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V as planned, but encountered an issue with its onboard mission timer shortly after disengaging from the launch vehicle. That caused it to misfire its thrusters and expend fuel, and a communication error meant that NASA was not able to correct the issue until it had used too much fuel to allow it to continue to the Space Station as planned. The capsule did safely return to Earth, however, and provided valuable test data on the way.

Syfy reports: Soaring into the wild blue yonder and beyond, the planet's only non-capsule, private orbital spacecraft, Dream Chaser, is slated to make its first flight sometime next year shuttling supplies and cargo to the International Space Station for NASA.

This stylish unmanned space plane was recently given its official name, Tenacity, and a pair of exotic composite material wings to complete its sleek design. Constructed by the Colorado-based aerospace firm Sierra Nevada Corporation, Dream Chaser is meant to launch vertically atop a booster rocket and completes its missions with gliding runway landings similar to NASA's retired fleet of space shuttles... NASA chose Dream Chaser as one of the flagship services for its Commercial Resupply Services 2 program, selecting Sierra Nevada to embark on 12 uncrewed cargo trips to the ISS by 2024.
The company's communications director calls it "an SUV for space -- a Space Utility Vehicle.

"Our dream is to have a whole fleet of space planes."

PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from CNET: NASA's Doug Hurley and his crewmate Bob Behnken had a satellite phone at their disposal after splashdown on Sunday. At a press conference later that day, Hurley filled us in on what they did with their spare time as they floated around. "Five hours ago we were in a spaceship bobbing around making prank satellite phone calls to whoever we could get ahold of," Hurley said. "Which was kind of fun, by the way." Hurley suggested the satellite phone bill should go to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who was sitting nearby. Hurley and Behnken didn't elaborate on the content of the prank calls, but here's hoping they tried to order a pizza for delivery to GO Navigator, the SpaceX recovery ship that fished them out of the water.

After travelling all night to return from the International Space Station, two NASA astronauts will splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico at 11:48 PT, reports CNET. "There will be about an hour of excitement prior to that moment as Crew Dragon deorbits and re-enters Earth's atmosphere..."

That 11-minute deorbiting burn should begin in five minutes (at 10:56 PT), and you can watch it live on SpaceX's YouTube channel before the splashdown 52 minutes later. CNET notes that "This will be the first crew recovery at sea of NASA astronauts since 1975 at the end of the Apollo moon exploration era, the space agency tweeted on Sunday." The reentry process is dramatic. "Crew Dragon will be traveling at orbital velocity prior to reentry, moving at approximately 17,500 miles per hour. The maximum temperature it will experience on reentry is approximately 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit," said NASA in a statement on July 24...

If Crew Dragon passes these final tests, then SpaceX will be able to provide regular, operational flights to the ISS starting later this year. And it would end NASA's reliance on Russian spacecraft for the first time since the shuttle era.
After splashdown the crew "will spend up to an hour floating inside the capsule before joint recovery teams from SpaceX and NASA retrieve them for a helicopter trip ashore," reports Reuters.

A post-splashdown news conference is then scheduled about 30 minutes later at 1:30 p.m. PT.

"NASA and SpaceX are going ahead with plans to bring NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken home from the International Space Station for a splashdown this weekend, even though Hurricane Isaias is heading for Florida's Atlantic coast," reports GeekWire.

"Fortunately, SpaceX's Dragon capsule is heading for waters off Florida's other coast." NASA said weather conditions are all systems go for the targeted site in the Gulf of Mexico, close to Pensacola, as well as for an alternate site off the coast of Panama City, Fla. That opened the way for preparations to proceed for the Dragon Endeavour to undock at 7:34 p.m. ET (4:34 p.m. PT) today, with a splashdown set for 2:41 p.m. ET (11:41 a.m. PT) Sunday.

The plan could be adjusted, before or after the docking, if the weather forecast changes. NASA and SpaceX had made plans for seven potential splashdown targets, but due to Isaias' strength, NASA concentrated on the westernmost sites.
Live coverage has begun online, and will continue for the next 19 hours.

Tomorrow's splashdown "will mark the first return of a commercially built and operated U.S. spacecraft from orbit," reports GeekWire, "and the first at-sea return of U.S. astronauts since the topsy-turvy splashdown of NASA's Apollo-Soyuz crew in 1975..."

"The next SpaceX Crew Dragon launch to the space station is scheduled for as early as next month. And Bob Behnken's wife, NASA astronaut Megan McArthur, is due to be part of a Dragon crew heading for the station next spring."

Humans on the moon and Mars would face the problem of damaging space radiation.

But new research suggests one possible solution to the fact that "Space wants to kill you," according to CNET: To protect astronauts, scientists have been studying an unusually hardy organism, discovered in one of the most radioactive places on the planet: Chernobyl... In some parts of the plant, the level of radiation spiked so high that exposure would kill a human in about 60 seconds. But several species of fungi have been discovered in the reactor. And they're thriving, "feeding" on the extreme levels of radiation. A new study, yet to undergo peer review, was published on the pre-print repository bioRxiv on July 17 and examines one of these species, Cladosporium sphaerospermum. It suggests the fungi could be used as a self-healing, self-replicating shield to protect astronauts in deep space...

Researchers placed the fungi aboard the ISS for 30 days and analyzed its ability to block radiation... The proof-of-concept study showed that the fungi was able to adapt to microgravity and thrive on radiation. It was able to block some of the incoming radiation, decreasing the levels by almost 2%. One of the major advantages, the researchers write, is the fungi self-replicates from microscopic amounts. You would only need to send a small amount to orbit, give it some nutrients and let it replicate, forming a biological radiation shield. With some tweaking, the fungi could be used to shield bases on the moon or Mars.

It's a long while until we put boots on the red planet, but the groundwork is being laid now.

IEEE Spectrum reports: There's still plenty that can disrupt radio communications... Rather than waiting for a human on Earth to tell the radio how to adapt its systems — during which the commands may have already become outdated — a radio with a neural network can do it on the fly. Such a device is called a cognitive radio. Its neural network autonomously senses the changes in its environment, adjusts its settings accordingly — and then, most important of all, learns from the experience... Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Penn State University, in cooperation with NASA, recently tested the first cognitive radios designed to operate in space and keep missions in contact with Earth. In our tests, even the most basic cognitive radios maintained a clear signal between the International Space Station (ISS) and the ground. We believe that with further research, more advanced, more capable cognitive radios can play an integral part in successful deep-space missions in the future, where there will be no margin for error...

Our own effort to create a proof-of-concept cognitive radio for space communications was possible only because of the state-of-the-art Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) test bed on the ISS. NASA's Glenn Research Center created the SCaN test bed specifically to study the use of software-defined radios in space. The test bed was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and installed on the main lattice frame of the space station in July 2012... Ours would be the first-ever cognitive radio experiments conducted in space...

During the tests, the cognitive radio clearly showed that it could learn how to maintain a communications link. The radio autonomously selected settings to avoid losing contact, and the link remained stable even as the radio adjusted itself...

Overall, the success of our tests on the SCaN test bed demonstrated that cognitive radios could be used for deep-space missions.