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Space station launches set to resume from Virginia next March

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Mark your calendar and cross your fingers an upgraded Antares rocket is expected to launch again from Virginia's spaceport this time next year.

If and when that happens, it will mark the final recovery of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) from the worst disaster in its short history. The state-owned spaceport is located at NASA Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore.

But many things must still go right in order for that to happen, said Barron "Barry" Beneski at Orbital ATK, formerly known as Orbital Sciences Corp. The Dulles-based company developed both the Antares and the Cygnus cargo craft to resupply the International Space Station under a $1.9 billion commercial contract with NASA.

The MARS launch pad has yet to be repaired after last October's catastrophic explosion of an Antares just after lift-off. The $20 million in federal tax dollars committed to pay for those repairs has yet to be released. And the Antares' new engines must still pass muster.

"So we have sort of parallel paths here of things that are underway that will lead us to be able to resume launches in March (2016)," Beneski said in a phone interview. The company has made two successful cargo runs already to the ISS.

And the timeline is firming up, Beneski said, starting in April, when Russian manufacturer Energomash tests a set of RD-181 rocket engines. Those engines are to replace the Aerojet AJ26 engines suspected in October's catastrophic failure. Beneski said the investigation into that accident should wrap up in a matter of weeks.

If the new engines pass, they'll be on their way to Wallops in June. A second set would follow this fall.

Around the same time, in October or November, Beneski said, the MARS pad should be fully repaired and ready for testing and recertification.

Then in January, Orbital ATK will bring a revamped Antares back to Wallops for an all-important test-fire of the new engines.

"And assuming that goes well, which it should," Beneski said, "we should be set to launch."

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Space station launches set to resume from Virginia next March

A Waste of Space [Commentary]

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NASAs new space station mission is not a big step toward Mars, but mostly a holding pattern

In late March astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will take off in a Soyuz rocket from the steppes of Kazakhstan, heading to the International Space Station (ISS) for a yearlong stay. NASA bills their mission as a crucial stepping-stone toward sending humans on a multiyear trip to Mars. That interplanetary voyage, part of our human drive for new frontiers, is the greatest dream of the space age. Yet rather than making that dream a reality, this mission seems to be a distracting detour. During their orbital sojourn Kelly and Kornienko will undergo rigorous medical testing designed to show researchers what long-term spaceflight does to human beings, particularly how prolonged weightlessness and radiation exposure cause harm. The results, NASA says, could lead to medical breakthroughs that make interplanetary hauls safer. Couldbut it likely wont make them safe enough. More likely, Kellys and Kornienkos tests will just confirm in greater detail what we already know from several previous long-duration missions: Our current space habitats are not adequate for voyages to other worlds. The lack of money to build these habitats, more than any lack of medical knowledge, is what keeps humans from Mars and other off-world destinations. For instance, we already know that living without gravity is a problem. Long periods of weightlessness atrophy muscles, weaken bones and worsen vision. Vigorous exercise can minimize some of these effects, so astronauts on the ISS spend hours each day working out. Even so, no matter how much they sweat in space, when Kelly and Kornienko return to Earth they will almost certainly be weaker than when they left. Investigators have known how to solve this problem since 1903, when Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky described a spinning space habitat that would generate a force pulling away from the structures center and toward the outer edges, thereby mimicking gravity. This effect varies with the structures spin rate, creating any gravitational strength the structure can withstand, whether the comfortable one g of Earth or the languorous 0.38 g of Mars. (No one yet knows the optimum g-levels for healthy, affordable long-duration spaceflight, and Kellys and Kornienkos mission wont tell us.) Why doesnt NASA avail itself of this solution? Because it costs a lot, and the agency has already spent more than $75 billion on the weightless ISS. A rotating habitat would be more costly and complex than a weightless one (although it need not be a prohibitively pricey behemoth like the doughnut-shaped space station from 2001: A Space Odyssey). Two modules connected by a long spoke, set spinning by modest bursts from thruster rockets, could create artificial gravity at a more reasonable price, although this solution would still be more expensive than simply performing more medical tests in weightlessness. What NASA should be testing is how to build such a craft, and how to live and work within it without becoming disoriented and dizzy. As a starting point, a scaled-down centrifuge could be installed on the ISS to test how lab animals respond to varying levels of artificial gravity. The station was originally designed to include such a facility, the Centrifuge Accommodation Module. NASA, however, scuttled the project by removing it from ISS assembly flights during the shuttle era, in part due to budgetary concerns. Radiation, the other health threat in space, is a more pernicious danger. Showers of solar protons and galactic cosmic rays can rip through cells, wreaking biological havoc. The current remedy is to clad living quarters in layers of dense material, which adds weight and increases the amount of fuel needed to get off the ground. It doesnt have to be this way. Advanced space propulsion systems paired with cheaper rocket launches could allow properly shielded craft to make faster interplanetary trips, decreasing a crews overall radiation exposure. Such protection will be possible only if NASA rekindles and follows through on developing advanced solar- and nuclear-electric propulsion, efforts which have been started and canceled several times over the past half century. It would be unfair to blame NASA alone for this shortsightedness. Integrating artificial gravity and better propulsion into its human spaceflight program would require many billions of dollars, and that money is not forthcoming from Congress. So NASA has struck a pragmatic course, tinkering with well-worn technologies instead of spending the financial and political capital to develop new ones. This path of least resistance is not going to take us to Marsor on long-duration trips to the moon, asteroids or other deep-space destinations. NASA leadership should take a page from the playbook of Elon Musk and SpaceX and be bolder, pushing technologies for future exploration rather than relying on those from the past. If the American people do not feel that it is worth the money to take these next steps, the nation should face facts and abandon this dream of sending space travelers to worlds beyond our own.

2015 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.

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A Waste of Space [Commentary]

Lengthy Spacewalk Readies ISS for Private Crew Capsules

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The first step in reconfiguring the International Space Station for commercial crew missions was successful.

The first step in reconfiguring the International Space Station (ISS) for commercial crew missions was completed successfully over the weekend, with NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts rigging cables during a nearly 7-hour spacewalk.

The pair "rigged a series of power and data cables at the forward end of the Harmony module and Pressurized Mating Adapter-2 and routed 340 of 360 feet of cable," NASA said in a statement.

The cable rigging is being done to prepare the ISS for the arrival of new International Docking Adapters aboard an unmanned SpaceX Dragon capsule later this year. NASA is planning seven spacewalks in total to install docking ports for Boeing's CST-100 and SpaceX's Dragon crew capsules by the end of 2015.

The trickiest part of the task, relocating the ISS's Leonardo multipurpose module from the Unity to the Tranquility connection nodes, will be conducted robotically by ground control.

Boeing and SpaceX expect to begin flying crewed missions to the ISS in 2017.

Wilmore has now logged 13 hours and 15 minutes outside the safety of a spacecraft over the course of two spacewalks. It was the first spacewalk for Virts, who tweeted about the experience and shared a selfie taken outside the orbiting space lab:

The weekend's work involved a 6-hour, 41-minute spacewalk that "completed all the scheduled tasks ... and one get ahead task," NASA said.

Wilmore and Virts are scheduled for another work session in the void of space on Wednesday at 7:10 a.m. ET, when they'll lay more cable and lubricate the end of the space station's robotic arm, according to the space agency. You can catch the upcoming spacewalk on NASA TV (embedded below), with coverage beginning at 6 a.m.

NASA said the total amount of time astronauts have spent assembling the ISS and doing maintenance tasks during 185 spacewalks is now 1,159 hours and 8 minutes.

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Lengthy Spacewalk Readies ISS for Private Crew Capsules

NASA Prepares ISS for Commercial Flights

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NASA is set to start reconfiguring the International Space Station with docking ports for private space taxis.

NASA is set to start reconfiguring the International Space Station with docking ports for commercial spacecraft carrying astronauts to the orbiting space laboratory.

The space agency said the remodel of the ISS is expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to Discovery News. It will be the first major overhaul of the space station since it was completed in 2011.

Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet nearly four years ago, NASA and other space agencies have relied on Russia's Roscosmos to ferry crews to the ISS in Soyuz capsules launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Last month, Boeing and SpaceX announced plans to begin ferrying astronauts into space by 2017 as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

In 2012, NASA awarded $1.1 billion to Boeing, SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada Corporation to design and develop vehicles that could carry astronauts into space within five years. Last year, the space agency eliminated Sierra Nevada from the competition, inking a deal with Boeing to fly humans into space worth as much as $4.2 billion and a concurrent contract with SpaceX potentially worth $2.6 billion.

Remodeling the ISS will involve the installation of docking ports for Boeing's CST-100 and SpaceX's Dragon crew capsules, which will attach to two International Docking Adapters set to arrive at the ISS aboard an unmanned Dragon capsule later this year, Discovery News reported.

"One berthing slip will be at the front end of the Harmony connecting node, where the space shuttles used to dock. The other will be on Harmony's zenith, or up-facing, port," the site said.

NASA's space station program manager Mike Suffredini told Discovery News that relocating the Leonardo multipurpose module from the Unity to the Tranquility connection nodes will be the "biggest challenge" in the reconfiguration. The entire job will involve seven spacewalks by ISS astronauts, the first of which is set for Friday, but the relocation of the Leonardo module will be done robotically by ground control.

"This is quite a bit of work. Our plan has always been to have a docking capability in place and operational by the end of 2015 and we're on track to do that," Suffredini told Discovery News.

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NASA Prepares ISS for Commercial Flights

'Pretty cool' – astronauts go on space walk to fix Space Station

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Published: 6:53AM Sunday February 22, 2015 Source: AP

Spacewalking astronauts routed cables outside the International Space Station today, a tricky and tiring job that needs to be completed before new American-made crew capsules can dock.

It was the first of three spacewalks planned for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts over the coming week.

Altogether, Wilmore and Virts have 233 metres of cable to run outside the space station. The longest single stretch, for installation Saturday, was 13 metres.

"Broadening my resume," Virts observed as he started laying cable.

NASA considers this the most complicated cable-routing job in the 16-year history of the space station. Equally difficult will be running cable on the inside of the complex.

The extensive rewiring is needed to prepare for NASA's next phase 418 kilometres up: the 2017 arrival of the first commercial spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to the orbiting lab.

NASA is paying Boeing and SpaceX to build the capsules and fly them from Cape Canaveral, which hasn't seen a manned launch since the shuttle fleet retired in 2011. Instead, Russia is doing all the taxi work - for a steep price.

The first of two docking ports for the Boeing and SpaceX vessels - still under development - is due to arrive in June. Even more spacewalks will be needed to rig everything up.

There were so many cables - up to 10 today to deal with - that NASA colour-coded them. That helped the spacewalkers only so much; they expected a lighter blue for one of the lines.

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'Pretty cool' - astronauts go on space walk to fix Space Station

Pressure is on to find the cause for vision changes in space

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IMAGE:NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins, Expedition 37 flight engineer, performs ultrasound eye imaging in the Columbus laboratory of the International Space Station. European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, flight engineer, assists... view more

Credit: NASA

A change in your vision is great when referring to sparking a creative idea or a new approach to a challenge. When it refers to potential problems with sight, however, the cause and possible solutions need to be identified.

The human body is approximately 60 percent fluids. During spaceflight, these fluids shift to the upper body and move across blood vessel and cell membranes differently than they normally do on Earth.

One of the goals of the Fluid Shifts investigation, launching to the International Space Station this spring, is to test the relationship between those fluid shifts and a pattern NASA calls visual impairment and intracranial pressure syndrome, or VIIP. It involves changes in vision and the structure of the eyes and indirect signs of increased pressure in the brain, and investigators say more than half of American astronauts have experienced it during long spaceflights.

Improved understanding of how blood pressure in the brain affects eye shape and vision also could benefit people on Earth who have conditions that increase swelling and pressure in the brain or who are put on extended bed rest.

"Our first aim is to assess the shift in fluids, to see where fluids go and how the shift varies in different individuals," says Michael B. Stenger, Ph.D., Wyle Science Technology and Engineering Group, one of the principal investigators. "Our second goal is to correlate fluid movement with changes in vision, the structure of the eye, and other elements of VIIP syndrome."

A third aim is to evaluate application of negative pressure to the lower body to prevent or reverse fluid shifts and determine whether this prevents vision changes. Researchers are collaborating with Roscosmos (the Russian Federal Space Agency) on that part of the study because the Russians have a lower body negative pressure device, the Chibis suit, aboard the station. Recently published ground-based data show that applying negative pressure over the lower body helps shift fluids away from the head during simulated spaceflight, adds co-investigator Brandon Macias, Ph.D., of the University of California San Diego.

For a variety of reasons, the Chibis suit cannot be moved from the Russian Service Module of the space station. Therefore, to conduct these unique experiments, crew members will transport medical research equipment from the U.S. side of the station to the Russian module. Moving things around in space is a lot more complicated than it is on the ground, says co-investigator Douglas Ebert, Ph.D., of Wyle Laboratories. In this case, it will take more than four hours of crew time to move and set up the equipment, one or two hours for the experiment itself, and another four or so hours to move everything back.

That effort will pay off though, in terms of new and important data that may lead to the answers of how and why VIIP happens and how to prevent or treat it during spaceflight.

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Pressure is on to find the cause for vision changes in space

Astronauts try to complete tricky cable repair outside space station

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Spacewalking astronauts successfully completed a three-day cable job outside the International Space Station on Sunday, routing several-hundred feet of power and data lines for new crew capsules commissioned by NASA.

It was the third spacewalk in just over a week for Americans Terry Virts and Butch Wilmore, and the quickest succession of spacewalks since NASA's former shuttle days.

The advance work was needed for the manned spacecraft under development by Boeing and SpaceX. A pair of docking ports will fly up later this year, followed by the capsules themselves, with astronauts aboard, in 2017.

Once safely back inside, Virts reported a bit of water in his helmet again for the second time in as many spacewalks. He stressed it was "not a big deal" and said there was no need to hurry out of his suit.

Virts and Wilmore installed two sets of antennas Sunday, as well as 400 feet of cable for this new communication system. They unreeled 364 feet of cable on Feb. 21 and last Wednesday.

It was complicated, hand-intensive work, yet the astronauts managed to wrap up more than an hour early Sunday, for a 5 -hour spacewalk. Their three outings spanned 19 hours.

"You guys have done an outstanding job," Mission Control radioed, "even for two shuttle pilots."

Sunday's 260-mile-high action unfolded 50 years to the month of the world's first spacewalk.

Soviet Alexei Leonov floated out into the vacuum of space on March 18, 1965, beating America's first spacewalker, Gemini 4's Edward White II, by just 2 1/2 months. Leonov is now 80; White died in the Apollo 1 fire on the launch pad in 1967.

"It's amazing ... to see how far we've come from the very first steps outside," Virts said.

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Astronauts try to complete tricky cable repair outside space station

Russia's New ISS Module to Be Ready in Early 2016

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Russia's Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center will finish assembling the new module for the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2016, the center's acting chief said Wednesday.

"We will finish equipping the module in February 2016. Then the module will be transferred to [Russian rocket and space corporation] RSC Energia for final adjustments. After that, it will be ready to be launched and subsequently integrated into the international space station," Andrey Kalinovsky said.

The launch of module Nauka ("Science" in Russian) initially planned for 2007, has been repeatedly delayed.

Nauka will perform a range of functions including life-support, steering the ISS with an attached motor and docking with cargo vessels.

The modules of the ISS are canister- or sphere-shaped areas of the station where the astronauts live and work.

Currently, the ISS comprises more than a dozen modules, including five Russian modules, according to NASA.

Source: Sputnik International

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Russia's New ISS Module to Be Ready in Early 2016

Astronauts Finish 5-hour Spacewalk

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CAPE CANAVERAL, FL -- Astronauts on the International Space Station completed a spacewalk Sunday despite the appearance of water inside an astronaut's helmet, NASA reported.

In a tweet, the space agency said astronaut Terry Virts experienced water inside his helmet, just as he did Wednesday, but "it's a known issue; no concern."

The spacewalk lasted five hours and 38 minutes, NASA said.

"Crews have now spent a total of 1,171 hours and 29 minutes conducting space station assembly and maintenance during 187 spacewalks," the agency said in a release.

NASA previously said the suit worn by NASA astronaut Virts has a history of "sublimator water carryover." Water in the sublimator cooling component can condense when the suit is repressurized after a spacewalk, causing a small amount of water to push into the helmet, NASA said.

NASA said International Space Station managers had "a high degree of confidence" in the suit.

On the upcoming spacewalk, Virts and Barry Wilmore installed antennas to provide data to visiting vehicles and deploy 400 feet of cable along the edge of the station.

Virts said he first noticed traces of fluid and dampness in his helmet Wednesday while he was waiting for the crew lock cabin to repressurize.

He and Wilmore had been outside the space station for nearly seven hours working on the station's robotic arm and performing some maintenance.

Virts immediately alerted fellow astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti about the water, and she alerted Mission Control in Houston.

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Astronauts Finish 5-hour Spacewalk

Earth From Space : Time Lapse from the International Space Station 4K Ultra HD – Video

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Earth From Space : Time Lapse from the International Space Station 4K Ultra HD
Earth From Space : Time Lapse from the International Space Station 4K Ultra HD Bringing you the BEST Space and Astronomy videos online. Showcasing videos and...

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Earth From Space : Time Lapse from the International Space Station 4K Ultra HD - Video


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