New York-based architecture firm Clouds Architecture Office has designed a concept for the Avatar X space exploration campus in Japan. The idea sees a robotics research centre suspended over a human-made crater.

The firm designed the space technology research campus for Avatar X in an old mining site in Oita prefecture, Kyushu, because it's already similar to a lunar landscape.

However, they will sculpt the crater at the centre of the site to exaggerate it's moon-like appearance. Hanging 18 metres above the bottom of the crater with steel cables, the Avatar X Lab will be built from transparent and translucent panels of fluoropolymer membrane wrapped around a steel frame.

Moreover, astronauts have continually lived aboard the International Space Station since 2000, arriving and departing in crews of two to seven at a time.

And now a US spaceship stocked with supplies for the International Space Station is set to launch Thursday, November 15, which will be the first such trip since a Soyuz rocket carrying an American astronaut and a Russian Cosmonaut failed in October.

Just in case, NASA added some last-minute, extra supplies for the three orbiting scientists. However, the next Soyuz launch, will carry three astronauts on board, one Russian, one Canadian and one American and it is scheduled for December 3rd.

The extra supplies includes additional spares for the station's water recovery system and urine processor, according to NASA spokesman speaking to AFP. 

NASA will deploy an Antares rocket from its Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) situated at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on Wallops Island, along Virginia's eastern shore.

Engineered by aerospace and defense manufacturer Northup Grumman, the rocket will hold one of the company’s Cygnus spacecraft, which was built o transport supplies to the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle’s retirement.

On Thursday, the NASA Visitor Center at Wallops will be open as of 1 a.m. for members of the public who wish to catch a glimpse of the launch. 

Furthermore, as per NASA the public can also watch the rocket launch from Robert Reed Park on Chincoteague Island or Beach Road, which extends between Chincoteague and Assateague islands.

In other news, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 (likely F9 v1.2) has been officially certified by NASA to launch the space agency’s most valuable and vital scientific spacecraft. This could allow SpaceX to routinely compete for missions comparable to Hubble Space Telescope, the Curiosity Mars rover (Mars Science Laboratory), Cassini (a Saturn orbiter), and James Webb Space Telescope, among various others.

SpaceX is coming close to it’s 35th successful consecutive launch for it’s Falcon family and now this certification functions as a practical endorsement of all the hard work SpaceX has put into optimizing Falcon 9 for performance and reliability.

Even though Falcon 9 is able to perform extremely impressive feats beyond Earth orbit, that performance is made truly competitive with ULA’s Atlas V rocket when Falcon 9 is deployed as a fully expendable vehicle. What’s more, both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are almost guaranteed to cost much less than the Atlas V, even assuming no recovery attempt is made. 

Will you be watching the launch of the Antares rocket? If so, will you watch it live or online? Let us know in the comments below!