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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Spotlight on America: Astronauts move SpaceX capsule to new docking port for 1st time ahead of space station crew arrivals

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Categories: ASCF News National Preparedness

Comments: 0

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NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts completed the first commercial crew port relocation at the International Space Station on Monday (April 5), as they moved the Crew Dragon spacecraft in preparation for the arrival of the next crew.

The relocation was performed by NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi. The crew undocked the Crew Dragon, nicknamed Resilience, from the forward port of the space station's Harmony module at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 a.m. GMT) and reconnected to the module's space-facing port at 7:08 a.m. EDT (1108 GMT).

The astronauts moved Resilience to a different port on the space station to make room for an incoming Crew Dragon spacecraft arriving later this month, named Endeavour, which will dock at Harmony's forward port. The arriving SpaceX Crew-2 mission includes NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and  Megan McArthur, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet. The crew is scheduled to launch to the space station on April 22 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"We're very excited about [moving Resilience] and we'd like to say congratulations on behalf of the whole Expedition 64 team as well as the Crew-1 Dragon team. Congratulations to the commercial crew program for 10 years. What an amazing 10 years it has been," Hopkins said during a call with Steve Stich, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager, from the space station on Friday (April 2). "To think about where you started and where we are now — and now we're getting ready to actually take this vehicle out for a little spin. … We're all very excited to be a part of it."

On March 19, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, along with two Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, relocated the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from the Earth-facing port of the station's Rassvet module to the space-facing Poisk port. However, unlike the Soyuz relocation maneuver, which required manual flying, the Crew Dragon is operated autonomously.

"It's pretty cool and it is quite an amazing view to separate from your vehicle that's been your home for months and to be able to look at it from 60 meters [about 200 feet]," Rubins said during the call from the space station, which NASA shared on YouTube Friday (April 2).

Crew-1 is scheduled to return to Earth in late April or early May, leaving the space-facing port of Harmony vacant for when a Dragon cargo spacecraft arrives with supplies and the first set of new solar arrays for the space station later this summer. Rubins and Glover began preparing the space station for the new solar arrays during a spacewalk on Feb. 28, when they installed one of two modification kits that are needed to support the new arrays. The Dragon cargo spacecraft will need to dock at the space-facing port to allow for robotic extraction of the new solar arrays from Dragon's trunk using Canadarm2, according to a statement from NASA.

While today's relocation maneuver was the first time a Crew Dragon spacecraft needed to be moved, it likely won't be the last, given the Crew-1 mission is the first of six certified crew missions NASA and SpaceX have planned as a part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program, according to the statement.

Photo: The SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience seen during a relocation maneuver conducted on April 5, 2021. (Image credit: NASA TV)

Link: https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-space-station-relocation?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SDC_Newsletter&utm_content=SDC_Newsletter+&utm_term=6260724

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