Well, here’s his goodbye. It’s a slightly tweaked version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Yep, “Space Oddity” performed in space. It just feels right, doesn’t it?

[via reddit]

Literally. Well, not its orbit (apologies). Anyway, Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Chris Hadfield, Commander of the International Space Station, was part of the big reveal. For those of you who lost track, yes, Canada did just unveil a new style of currency in space.

“Canadians can be very proud of their new polymer bank notes,” said Finance Minister Flaherty. “With today’s unveiling of the final two notes in the series, one can see not only the unique story that each of the five denominations tells, but the unifying theme that underlies them all – the profound courage, determination, and ingenuity of our nation and its people.”

Here’s the Bank of Canada’s rationale for the switch to polymer:

Almost half a billion of these new notes are now in circulation. Safer, cheaper, greener, the polymer notes have already proven their worth. Safer, because all the notes have the same state-of-the-art security features, using holography, transparency and other elements that make them difficult to counterfeit but easy for everyone, especially those behind the counter, to verify.

Cheaper, because the durable polymer material lasts at least 2.5 times longer than paper-based notes. This means that fewer notes will need to be printed, making the series more economical. Greener because, over the life of the series, fewer notes produced also means fewer notes transported. And when they do need to be replaced, the notes will be recycled in Canada.

The new $5 bill features images of Canadarm2 and Dextre – robots used to build and keep the ISS. It also features a portrait of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada from 1896 to 1911.

You can watch the currency reveal from space below:

Canada already has $20, $50, and $100 polymer notes in circulation, and the Bank of Canada says that they are the most secure bank note that they’ve ever issued.

“I try to inspire young Canadians to aim high. This new $5 bill should do the same,” Commander Hadfield said. “By giving prominence to Canadian achievements in space, this bank note reminds us that not even the sky is the limit.”

Not only is the wringing-out part cool, but so is the whole getting-it-wet-in-the-first-place part.

If this isn’t reason enough to find space programs, I don’t know what is.

Though the launch was successful, a problem with three of the capsule’s four thruster pods delayed the opening of its solar arrays. SpaceX engineers had to wait until the capsule was over its Australia-based ground station to “command inhibit override” and reactivate enough of the thruster pods to deploy the arrays. While only one of the thruster pods was reactivated, it was enough to successfully deploy the arrays.

SpaceX spent hours trying to reactivate the two thruster pods that were still malfunctioning. At around 3 pm EST Space X founder Elon Musk tweeted that the thruster pods were back online and that the capsule is no longer drifting:

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Elon Musk
@elonmusk

Pods 1 and 4 now online and thrusters engaged. Dragon transitioned from free drift to active control. Yes!!

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11 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

The problems caused the capsule to miss one of its scheduled burns that would take it toward its scheduled docking with the ISS. As a result, the docking could be delayed.

SpaceX and NASA have scheduled a teleconference for 3 pm EST. More details about the Dragon capsule and its docking schedule should be revealed during the call.

The Dragon capsule is carrying 1,200 pounds of cargo and science equipment that will be delivered to the ISS’s crew of six international astronauts. The capsule is scheduled to return with refuse and used equipment on March 25. SpaceX successfully completed its first resupply mission to the ISS back in October 2012 when it delivered 882 pounds of supplies to the satellite.

The launch of the capsule can be seen in the video below, which NASA released earlier today:

When you’re done with this, make sure you catch his recent reddit AMA. It’s out of this world! (I’ll show myself out).

The Hangout will take place from 11 am to 12 pm EST on February 22. The event will allow NASA fans to interact with astronauts both on Earth and aboard the ISS. Astronauts Kevin Ford, Chris Hadfield, and Tom Marshburn will be on-hand to answer questions about life on the ISS.

Since only up to 10 people can “Hangout” at one time (though the event will be open for anyone to watch live), NASA is encouraging its social media fans to submit video questions before the Hangout. During the Hangout “several” of these video questions will be chosen to be aired and answered by the ISS station crew and other astronauts. The videos must be uploaded to YouTube with the tag #askAstro and must be 30 seconds or shorter. The deadline for submitting videos is February 12.

NASA will also take live questions from its social media feeds on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ during the Hangout. The same hashtag, #askAstro, will be used to identify questions during the Hangout. The agency stated that “unique and original questions” are more likely to be answered.

Though this is the first NASA Hangout from the ISS, it won’t be the last. The agency has stated that it will continue to host Hangouts “with astronauts on the ground and in space, scientists, engineers, and managers on the agency’s missions and milestones.”

European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Reiter performed the experiments while on the ISS, as seen in the video below. Human immune cells were allowed to float freely in microgravity while others were placed in a centrifuge that simulated gravity. The cells in the centrifuge were found to be more healthy than those left to float.

Analysis showed that a transmitter called the Rel/NF-kB pathway stopped working in microgravity, preventing immune cells from working correctly.

“Normally, when our bodies sense an invasion, a cascade of reactions occur that are controlled by the information held in our genes, similar to an instruction book,” said Isabelle Walther, a researcher with the Space Biology Group in Zurich, Switzerland. “Finding which gene does what is like looking for the right key to fit a keyhole, without having found the keyhole yet.”

Researchers stated that these findings could help disease research in two ways. First, being able to deactivate genes associated with the immune system could help patients who suffer from autoimmune diseases. Second, drugs could be developed to target genes that fight specific diseases.

“We are working towards a finer control of disease,” said Millie Hughes-Fulford, a NASA astronaut and an investigator on the research. “If you imagine our immune system responding to diseases as a waterfall, up until now we have been fighting disease at the bottom of the waterfall. In the future we could target the raindrops before they have a chance to cascade into waterfalls. We live in exciting times.”

“The ability for NASA to quickly reuse this hardware and launch it to the space station is a great example of a low-cost approach that will have high benefits to science and life here on Earth,” said Mike Suffredini, NASA’s International Space Station program manager.

Scatterometers measure the scattering effect produced when scanning the Earth’s surface using a microwave radar sensor. The previous wind data instrument, the QuikScat, stopped collecting ocean wind data in 2009 after operating for 10 years. No replacement will be available soon, which is why NASA adapted existing QuikScat hardware.

“ISS-RapidScat represents a low-cost approach to acquiring valuable wind vector data for improving global monitoring of hurricanes and other high-intensity storms,” said Howard Eisen, ISS-RapidScat project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “By leveraging the capabilities of the International Space Station and recycling leftover hardware, we will acquire good science data at a fraction of the investment needed to launch a new satellite.”

The ISS-RapidScat will be launched to the ISS on a SpaceX Dragon cargo mission. It will be installed on the end of the ISS’s Columbus laboratory and have measurement accuracy “similar” to QuikScat. The instrument is expected operate for two years.

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/JSC)

The crew consists of NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield. The crew is currently riding the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft and is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Friday morning.

The trio are expected to stay on the ISS until May of next year. They will join three people already onboard the space station – Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford and Roscosmos Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who have been on the station since October. Hadfield will become the first Canadian commander of the ISS in March, when the current crew of the space station returns to earth.

The focus of this expedition, according to NASA, is scientific research including human physiology tests. The crew will serve as subjects for the examination of astronaut bone loss while also conducting experiments (such as on how fire behaves in space), observations of Earth, human research, and technology demonstrations.

The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft was captured by NASA, and can be seen below. Temperatures were far below freezing at the time of the launch.

The Boeing Company, Sierra Nevada Corporation Space System, and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) were all contracted for around $10 million. The companies will begin developing integrated crew transportation systems that will launch American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). These programs will end NASA’s recent reliance on Russia for transportation to and from the ISS.

“These contracts represent important progress in restoring human spaceflight capabilities to the United States,” said Phil McAlister, director of the Commercial Spaceflight Development Division at NASA Headquarters. “NASA and its industry partners are committed to the goal of safely and cost-effectively launching astronauts from home within the next five years.”

Starting next year, the companies will work with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) to develop spacecrafts, launch vehicles, and ground & mission operations that meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements. In mid-2014, the companies will begin competing with one another to test and verify their systems for crewed demonstration flights to the ISS.

SpaceX could have a leg up on its competition. The company in October of this year completed the first privatized resupply of the ISS using its Dragon capsule. The capsule carried 882 pounds of supplies to the ISS and brought back 1,673 pounds of used material in a successful mission.

(Image courtesy SpaceX)