Minutes of April 2022 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met April 9, 2022, at the McMurray’s house in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending in person were Clifford and Claire McMurray. Tom and Heidi Koszoru, John Northcutt, Tim Scott, Dave Sheely, Steve Swift and Syd Henderson. Robin Scott attended by Zoom. OSA President Clifford McMurray presided over the meeting. He did an Update discussing links to material covered in the meeting and this is online at http://osa.nss.org/Update2204.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
Pyotr Dubrov of the cosmonauts who came back with Mark Vande Hei, also went up with him, so he also spent 355 days on a single mission, [Vande Hei’s is an American record, but the Russian record is held by Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov who spent 437 days in space in one stay aboard Mir.]
Blue Origin’s six-person flight didn’t include Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson because the flight was rescheduled, and Davidson had a conflict. We watched a video with the crew after the flight.
Poland’s neighbors are interested in Poland’s launch capability. [I’d think the countries down-range would be very interested, especially Russia. A good article on this is at https://spacenews.com/poland-virgin-orbit-partner-on-eastern-europe-launch-initiative]
Virgin Orbit has gone public. [Poland’s working with them.]
We read an article on lunar mining. The Missouri School of Science and Technology at Rolla will process materials.
A Chinese company is going to start suborbital tourist flights in 2024. Their spacecraft looks a lot like Blue Origin’s and SpaceX’s.
This Week at NASA included the launch of the NOAA satellite, GOES-18 which is going to the GOES West position. [In case you are getting a feeling of déjà vu, I often hear the satellite itself called GOES west. GOES East is a position 75.2° West Longitude in geostationary orbit and GOES-West is 136° West Longitude.]
We watched a video on the Webb Space Telescope alignment.
NASA has extended Ingenuity’s mission.
We have now confirmed 5,000 exoplanets.
After the meeting we had a cookout with hamburgers and hot dogs. The plan was to also watch a movie, but people cleared out after feeding. We’ll show the movie around the Apollo 17 anniversary.
Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
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Norman, OK 73070
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