Two pieces of space junk whizzed by the International Space Station this week but posed no threat to the orbiting laboratory or its three-person crew, NASA officials say.

The space debris --a chunk of an old Russian Cosmos satellite and leftover chunk of an Indian rocket --made back-to-back flybys of the space station Thursday and Friday (Sept. 27 and 28). The Russian Cosmos satellite debris made its closest approach to the space station on Thursday at 10:42 a.m. EDT, with the Indian rocket remnant making its close pass Friday at 1:47 a.m. EDT.

Initially, NASA and its Russian partners planned to move the space station clear of the incoming debris by firing the rocket thrusters on a European cargo ship. But more observations of the orbital debris found the space junk fragments would not creep too close for comfort when they zoomed by, NASA officials said.

"Additional tracking Wednesday night of both the Cosmos satellite debris and the Indian rocket body debris resulted in a high degree of confidence that neither object would pose any possibility of a conjunction with the International Space Station and a debris avoidance maneuver scheduled for Thursday morning was cancelled by the flight control team at Mission Control," NASA officials said in an update Thursday. [Space Junk Photos & Cleanup Concepts]

NASA and its partners typically move the space station if there is a high probability of space junk passing inside a safety perimeter shaped like a pizza box that extends around the orbiting lap. This red zone extends about a half-mile above and below the station, and about 15 miles around the football-field size space lab.

Planning for the possibility of a space junk avoidance maneuver forced space station controllers to delay the undocking of the European cargo ship that would have performed the move. The departure of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle 3 (ATV-3) was originally scheduled for Tuesday (Sept. 25), but failed to undock due to a computer glitch that has since been resolved.

The ATV-3 spacecraft, which is named Edoardo Almadi to honor the late Italian physicist of the same name, is now scheduled to undock on Friday afternoon at 5:46 p.m. EDT, NASA officials said.

Space junk has been a growing threat for astronauts on the International Space Station and satellites in orbit. The U.S. military's Space Surveillance Network and NASA regularly track about 20,000 pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth.

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Back-to-back near-misses on space station

Two pieces of space junk whizzed by the International Space Station this week but posed no threat to the orbiting laboratory or its three-person crew, NASA officials say.

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Back-to-Back Space Junk Buzzes Space Station

The undocking of a supply craft from the International Space Station (ISS) will take place Friday after a three-day delay, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

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Space freighter undocking set for Friday

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The International Space Station is safe from two pieces of menacing junk.

NASA said Thursday the orbiting lab does not need to move out of the way of fragments from an Indian rocket and an old Russian satellite. The maneuver had been planned for Thursday morning, but was called off.

Mission Control says there is a high degree of confidence neither object will come too close to the space station and its three occupants. The astronauts and controllers can now turn their attention to Fridays undocking of a European cargo ship. The departure was put off earlier this week because of a communication system error.

The space stations neighborhood 260 miles up is full of potentially damaging debris. Usually, the junk keeps a safe distance.

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NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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NASA calls off space station's dodging of junk

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) Want to be a part of International Space Station research? Here's your chance. NASA is offering opportunities for academia, industry and government agencies to develop and carry out research and technology demonstrations on the space station using the newly installed Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Testbed.

These opportunities will allow researchers to develop new software according to the Space Telecommunications Radio Standard, or STRS, architecture for radios and reconfigure how radios communicate in space.

The SCaN Testbed is a communications, navigation and networking demonstration platform based on the STRS. The experimental platform began its initial checkout activities on the space station Aug. 13, and will operate for at least three years.

Experiment developers will provide software components to the STRS repository and enable future hardware platforms to use common reusable software modules.

The new testbed is composed of three STRS-compliant, software-defined radios to be operated in space, said Richard Reinhart, principal investigator of the SCaN Testbed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "This flexible testbed will allow researchers to develop new software according to the STRS architecture for the radios and reconfigure how the radios communicate on-orbit, to explore new concepts for future missions. Once proven, this new capability will enable greater science return from future NASA missions."

There are two opportunities (http://spaceflightsystems.grc.nasa.gov/SOPO/SCO/SCaNTestbed/Candidate/) to use the testbed on the station.

The SCaN Testbed Experiment Opportunity invites industry and government agencies to enter into Space Act Agreements with NASA to use the SCaN Testbed on space station. The SCaN Testbed Cooperative Agreement Notice invites academia to develop proposals to use the orbiting laboratory's SCaN Testbed research capabilities. NASA expects these first industry, government agency, and university demonstrations to take place by late 2013 or early 2014.

"These two announcements of opportunity provide industry, academia and government agency experimenters a unique service and facility to develop and field the latest communications, navigation and networking technologies not only in the laboratory, but also in the dynamic space environment," said David Irimies, deputy project manager of the SCaN Testbed at Glenn. "Investigators will gain valuable flight experience, raise the technology maturity level of their applications by operating within the space environment, and demonstrate future mission capabilities for a potentially key role in future NASA missions."

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NASA offers opportunity to use communications testbed on space station

Plans to move the International Space Station to a slightly different orbit were called off on Thursday after controllers determined that two pieces of orbital debris would not pose a collision risk, NASA said.

Mission controllers had been monitoring debris from an old Russian Cosmos satellite and a fragment from an Indian rocket, and said there was a chance that the debris could come close enough to require an adjustment in the station's orbit on Thursday.

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But NASA said additional tracking of the debris "resulted in a high degree of confidence that neither object would pose any possibility of a conjunction" with the station. As a result, Mission Control in Houston canceled the debris avoidance maneuver. Russian flight controllers endorsed the decision, NASA said.

Space junk moves so fast that it can puncture the station, so engineers try to give debris a wide berth whenever something comes close. Three spacefliers NASA's Sunita Williams, Russia's Yuri Malenchenko and Japan's Akihiko Hoshide are currently living aboard the station.

If the maneuver had been required, the engines of a European cargo ship docked to the station, the Edoardo Amaldi Automated Transfer Vehicle, would have been fired to make the move. A communications glitch kept the unmanned ATV from leaving the station earlier this week, as scheduled.

"Russian engineers told mission managers that they fully understand the nature of the error and are prepared to proceed to a second undocking attempt," NASA said in Thursday's update. The tentative plans for the debris avoidance maneuver meant the next attempt to undock the ATV had to be delayed until Friday at the earliest.

Once the craft is undocked, a pair of engine firings will send it down through the atmosphere to burn up over the Pacific Ocean.

This report includes information from NBC News and The Associated Press.

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Space station on alert

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International Space Station officials are keeping a watchful eye on two different pieces of space junk that may require the ISS to steer away from potential impact threats. Debris from the Russian COSMOS satellite and a fragment of a rocket from India may come close enough to the space station to require a debris avoidance maneuver. If needed, the maneuver would be done using the ESAs Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Edoardo Amadi. The ATV was supposed to undock last night, but a communications glitch forced engineers to call off the departure. Both pieces of debris are edging just inside the so-called red zone of miss distance to the station with a time of closest approach calculated to occur Thursday at 14:42 UTC (10:42 a.m. Eastern time.) It is not known how large the object is.

An approach of debris is considered close only when it enters an imaginary pizza box shaped region around the station, measuring 1.5 x 50 x 50 kilometers (about a mile deep by 30 miles across by 30 miles long) with the vehicle in the center.

NASA says the three-person Expedition 33 crew is in no danger and continues its work on scientific research and routine maintenance. The current crew includes NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

If the maneuver is required and NASA said it could be called off any time it would occur at 12:12 UTC (8:12 a.m. EDT) Thursday, using the engines on the ATV, which remains docked to the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module. It usually takes about 30 hours to plan for and verify the need for an avoidance maneuver.

Debris avoidance maneuvers are conducted when the probability of collision is greater than 1 in 100,000, if it will not result in significant impact to mission objectives. If it is greater than 1 in 10,000, a maneuver will be conducted unless it will result in additional risk to the crew.

Only three times during the nearly 12 years of continual human presence on the ISS has a collision threat been so great that the crew has taken shelter in the Soyuz vehicles. (Those events occured on March 12, 2009, June 28, 2011 and March 24, 2012.) During those events, the station was not impacted. While the ISS likely receives small micrometeoroid hits frequently (based on experiments left outside the ISS and visual inspections of the stations hull) no large debris impacts have occurred that have caused depressurization or other problems on the ISS.

Tuesdays initial attempt to undock the ATV was called off due to a communications error between the Zvezda modules proximity communications equipment and computers on the ATV. Russian engineers told mission managers that they fully understand the nature of the error and are prepared to proceed to a second undocking attempt, which has been postponed to Friday at the earliest, due to the potential space debris threat.

Once it is undocked, the ATV will move to a safe distance away from the station for a pair of engine firings that will send the cargo ship back into the Earths atmosphere to burn up over the Pacific Ocean.

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Space Debris Threat May Require Avoidance Maneuver for Space Station

Space officials are keeping a watchful eye on two different pieces of space junk that may force the International Space Station to steer away from potential impact threats.

Debris from the Russian COSMOS satellite and a fragment of a rocket from India may come close enough to the space station to require a debris avoidance maneuver. If needed, the maneuver would be done using the ESAs Automated Transfer Vehicle "Edoardo Amadi." The ATV was supposed to undock on Tuesday night, but a communications glitch forced engineers to postpone the departure.

Both pieces of debris are edging just inside the so-called "red zone" of miss distance to the station with a time of closest approach calculated to occur Thursday at 10:42 a.m. ET. It is not known how large the object is.

An approach of debris is considered close only when it enters an imaginary "pizza box" region around the station, measuring 1.5 by 50 by 50 kilometers (about a mile deep, by 30 miles across, by 30 miles long) with the vehicle in the center.

NASA says the three-person Expedition 33 crew is in no danger and continues its work on scientific research and routine maintenance. The current crew includes NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

If the maneuver is required and NASA said it could be called off any time it would occur at 8:12 a.m. ET Thursday, using the engines on the ATV, which remains docked to the aft port of the station's Zvezda service module. It usually takes about 30 hours to plan for and verify the need for an avoidance maneuver.

Debris avoidance maneuvers are conducted when the probability of collision is greater than 1 in 100,000, if the maneuver will not result in significant impact to mission objectives. If it is greater than 1 in 10,000, a maneuver will be conducted unless it results in additional risk to the crew.

If there's not enough time to conduct an avoidance maneuver, the space station's astronauts may be alerted to take shelter in their Soyuz vehicles. The last time that happened was on March 24, but the threatening object passed by without incident.

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Orbital debris sets off space station alert

The International Space Station is in danger of being hit by two pieces of debris from an old Russian satellite that had previously hit a US craft in 2009, a news report says.

The space station will encounter pieces of the Kosmos 2251 military spy orbiter in the next few days, the Interfax news agency quoted a source at Russian Mission Control as saying.

"Two fragments of the Kosmos 2251 craft may pose a danger to the station," the unnamed source was quoted as saying.

The source added that the station may now have to manoeuvre out of the path of the approaching debris in a special operation tentatively planned for Thursday.

The Kosmos 2251 satellite was launched by Russia in 1993 and decommissioned just two years later.

The satellite crashed into a US Iridium-33 satellite in February 2009 in the first such space accident of its kind. The collision created hundreds of smaller fragments that pose a danger to both the station and other satellites.

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Space station at risk of debris hit

The International Space Station may have to move to avoid some space junk.

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Space station may move to avoid passing junk

NASA is keeping a close eye on two pieces of space junk expected to whiz by the International Space Station in back-to-back passes, and the station may even have to dodge the orbital debris.

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NASA Tracking Space Junk Near International Space Station

An unmanned European cargo ship as large as a double-decker bus inside will have to wait a bit longer before leaving the International Space Station due to computer problems, NASA officials say.

The robotic Automated Transfer Vehicle 3 (ATV-3) spacecraft was slated to undock from the space station Tuesday evening, but a technical glitch with a laptop computer inside the station prevented to orbital departure. The two spacecraft were scheduled to part ways at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT).

"We're not undocking today, that's been canceled," a flight controller in Mission Control told the station's three-person crew.

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The computer glitch apparently interrupted signals from a laptop computer inside the station that serves as a command panel for the departing ATV-3 spacecraft. The computer is inside the Russian-built Zvezda module, the rear-most module that serves as the docking port for ATV spacecraft and visiting Russian spacecraft. [ Photos: Europe's Robotic ATV Spaceships ]

Station commander Sunita Williams of NASA told Mission Control that commands sent from the laptop apparently were not reaching the ATV spacecraft. Engineers are expected to meet early Wednesday to discuss the malfunction and determine when the next undocking attempt can be made, NASA officials said.

The space station's current Expedition 34 crew includes Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

The ATV-3 spacecraft, which is also known as Edoardo Almadi in honor of the late Italian physicist of the same name, is the third unmanned cargo ship built by the European Space Agency to send food, water, science gear and other supplies to the International Space Station. The spacecraft launched to the station in late March and delivered 7.2 tons of food to the orbiting lab.

The cylindrical ATV spacecraft are 32 feet long (10 meters) and nearly 15 feet wide (4.5 m). They are disposable spacecraft designed to fly themselves to the space station, and then be jettisoned at mission's end to burn up in Earth's atmosphere somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. The European Space Agency commands the spacecraft from a mission control center in Toulouse, France.

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Computer glitch delays space station undocking

After forty years of venturing no farther than low Earth orbit, NASA may have decided to establish a manned outpost at a greater distance than humanity has ever traveled before. According to documents seen by the Orlando Sentinel, NASA has chosen a proposal to build a space station beyond the Moon that will act as a “gateway spacecraft” to explore the Moon, the asteroids and eventually as a ...

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NASA to build manned space station beyond the Moon?

The European Space Agency says the undocking of its cargo craft from the International Space Station has been postponed after a communication malfunction during planned separation late Tuesday.

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European cargo fails to undock from space station

An unmanned European cargo ship as large as a double-decker bus inside will have to wait a bit longer before leaving the International Space Station due to computer problems, NASA officials say.

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Computer Glitch Delays Cargo Ship's Undocking from Space Station

When Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield heads to the International Space Station this December, the everyday items he will have with him — such as socks, dental floss and duct tape — will be used in some of the scientific experiments he conducts on board.

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Astronaut Chris Hadfield challenges young Canadians

A Russian state commission on Tuesday approved the main and backup crews of a new expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) ahead of the launch on October 23.

The new crew comprises Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin, and NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, while the backup crew includes Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, and NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy.

It will be the first space mission for Novitsky and Tarelkin. Ford spent 14 days in space when he traveled to the ISS as the Shuttle Discovery pilot in 2009.

The crew has chosen "Kazbek" as their call-sign after one of the highest peaks in the Caucasus Mountains, and a tiny behemoth toy as their talisman and Zero-gravity indicator.

The launch of the Soyuz TMA-06M manned spacecraft was earlier moved from October 15 to October 23 due to a technical problem detected during a preflight checkup.

Expedition 33 is expected to spend 148 days on board the orbital station. The crew will carry out a series of scientific experiments, and receive four Russian Progress space freighters and a European ATV-4 cargo spacecraft.

No spacewalks have been scheduled for this mission.

The crew is also planning to keep a space blog, recording their daily life on board the ISS.

Our work will certainly be a priority, but I hope we will have time to keep the space blog, Yevgeny Tarelkin told reporters on Tuesday. We really want to do it because we need to promote space exploration.

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New Space Station Crew Approved

The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

By: Peter Rakobowchuk, The Canadian Press

24/09/2012 5:42 PM | Comments: 0

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Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield speaks to reporters at a news conference Monday, September 24, 2012 in Saint-Hubert, Que. Hatfield blasts off for the International space station from Russia in December.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

LONGUEUIL, Que. - Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield plays coy when asked whether his upcoming six-month visit to the International Space Station will be his last trip into the cosmos.

"Never, say never," he said in an interview at the Canadian Space Agency on Monday.

The veteran astronaut is due to launch on a Russian spacecraft with NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko on Dec. 19 two weeks later than planned.

The three were originally scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 5.

Hadfield says a Russian Soyuz will be visiting the space station in a couple of weeks and that trips by a couple of resupply ships are also planned.

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Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield launch to space station pushed back two weeks

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SpaceX preps for International Space Station resupply mission

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2012) NASA managers, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) officials and international partner representatives Thursday announced Sunday, Oct. 7, as the target launch date for the first contracted cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.

International Space Station Program managers confirmed the status and readiness of the Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon cargo spacecraft for the SpaceX CRS-1 mission, as well as the space station's readiness to receive Dragon.

Launch is scheduled for 8:34 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. A back up launch opportunity is available on Oct. 8.

The launch of the Dragon spacecraft will be the first of 12 contracted flights by SpaceX to resupply the space station and marks the second trip by a Dragon to the station, following a successful demonstration mission in May. SpaceX services under the CRS contract will restore an American capability to deliver and return significant amounts of cargo, including science experiments, to the orbiting laboratory -- a feat not achievable since the retirement of the space shuttle.

The Dragon will be filled with about 1,000 pounds of supplies. This includes critical materials to support the 166 investigations planned for the station's Expedition 33 crew, including 63 new investigations. The Dragon will return about 734 pounds of scientific materials, including results from human research, biotechnology, materials and educational experiments, as well as about 504 pounds of space station hardware.

Materials being launched on Dragon will support experiments in plant cell biology, human biotechnology and various materials technology demonstrations, among others. One experiment, called Micro 6, will examine the effects of microgravity on the opportunistic yeast Candida albicans, which is present on all humans. Another experiment, called Resist Tubule, will evaluate how microgravity affects the growth of cell walls in a plant called Arabidopsis. About 50 percent of the energy expended by terrestrial-bound plants is dedicated to structural support to overcome gravity. Understanding how the genes that control this energy expenditure operate in microgravity could have implications for future genetically modified plants and food supply. Both Micro 6 and Resist Tubule will return with the Dragon at the end of its mission.

Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams of NASA and Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will use a robot arm to grapple the Dragon following its rendezvous with the station on Wednesday, Oct. 10. They will attach the Dragon to the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony module for a few weeks while crew members unload cargo and load experiment samples for return to Earth.

Dragon is scheduled to return in late October for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California.

While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop commercial spaceflight capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system.

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SpaceX, NASA target Oct. 7 launch for resupply mission to International Space Station