Monthly Archives: February 2017

Running a day late because of a navigation glitch, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship loaded with nearly 5,500 pounds of supplies and equipment was captured by the International Space Stations robot arm early Thursday, four days after launch from the Kennedy Space Center.

With the cargo ship flying in formation 30 feet below the lab complex, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, operating the robot arm, locked onto a grapple fixture at 5:44 a.m. EST (GMT-5) to wrap up a picture-perfect automated rendezvous.

Looks like weve got a great capture, Expedition 50 commander Shane Kimbrough called down to mission control in Houston. Thomas did an awesome job flying it in.

Congratulations, Thomas, Shane, Expedition 50, great job with Dragon capture, and sorry about the delays, astronaut Mike Hopkins replied from the control center. Now the real work starts.

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With the Dragon firmly in hand, flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston took over arm operations and pulled the spacecraft in for berthing at the forward Harmony modules Earth facing port. Sixteen motorized bolts in the ports common berthing mechanism then drove home, locking the spacecraft in place and clearing the way for hatch opening.

During a rendezvous attempt Wednesday, the Dragons on-board computer aborted the approach because of incorrect navigation data defining its orbit and trajectory. The spacecraft backed off while SpaceX flight controllers in Hawthorne, Calif., assessed the issue, figured out what was wrong and rescheduled a second attempt Thursday. There were no problems the second time around.

Dragon is now officially arrived to ISS, Pesquet radioed. Were very happy indeed to have it on board, and Im very much looking forward to putting to good use the two-and-a-half tons of science and cargo it carries.

Wed like to congratulate all the teams that took part in the mission in Hawthorne, California, Houston, Texas, and all over the world. Such a strong partnership between agencies and commercial entities, together with international partners, is without a doubt the future of space exploration.

A view of the Dragon after capture by the space stations robot arm.

NASA

While the Dragon capsule was completing its rendezvous, a Russian Progress supply ship was continuing its own approach to the space station. The Progress MS-05/66P spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday and if all goes well, it will dock at the Russian Pirs module around 3:34 a.m. Friday.

The Dragon was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center, the companys first Florida launch since a spectacular explosion Sept. 1 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station that destroyed another Falcon 9 and its communications satellite payload.

The cargo ships pressurized compartment, the section accessible to the crew inside the station, is packed with 3,150 pounds of supplies and equipment, including 580 pounds of food and clothing, 842 pounds of spare parts and other vehicle hardware and more than 1,600 pounds of science gear.

Twenty mice are housed in a rodent habitat, part of research to help scientists learn more about what processes govern bone regeneration and healing. Also on board: methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, in an experiment to learn more about designing more effective drugs by studying how the deadly bacteria mutate.

Mounted in the Dragons unpressurized trunk section are another 2,100 pounds of equipment: a $92 million ozone monitoring instrument, a $7 million sensor to monitor lightning strikes and experimental gear designed to help engineers perfect autonomous rendezvous and docking software.

The stations robot arm will be used by flight controllers to extract the cargo from the trunk so the devices can be mounted on the stations main power truss for long-term operation.

Reloaded with science samples, trash and no-longer-needed equipment, the Dragon is expected to return to Earth in about one month.

See the rest here:
SpaceX cargo ship finally reaches space station - CBS News

An astronaut administers a shock to an alien life form in a Petri dish aboard the International Space Station, in a scene from the movie Life. Bad idea? (CTMG via YouTube)

A real-life organism provides the inspiration for the alien monster at the center of Life, ahorror movie thats set on the International Space Station. But youd never guess which one.

Would you believe slime mold?

We used that as a model, working with the effects team, but ramped it up enormously, said Adam Rutherford, who served as a science consultant for the film. Moviegoers can get a glimpse at the results in the online trailers for Life, which opens in theaters on March 24.

Rutherford didnt just throw a dart at the tree of life to select slime mold. Its a weird kind of fungus-like critter that can be considered a one-celled or multicellular organism. Studies have shown that although it doesnt have a brain, it seems to be capable of learning and even figuring out railway routes.

Thats not a bad model for a fictional organism from Mars that combines neural and muscular functions in one cell. And its not a bad pick for Rutherford, a geneticist who also helped out with the AI movie Ex Machina and wrote a book titled Creation about the origin and future of life.

No one goes to a space horror flick for a science lecture, but the producers of Life took pains to throw in some real-life background about astrobiology, the challenges of studying samples from an alien world, and how to deal with a medical emergency on the space station.

One of the reasons it works so well is because its set in the near future, Rutherford told GeekWire.

China is already gearing up to bring samples back from the moon, as early as this year, and NASAs 2020 Mars rover is expected to lay the groundwork for an eventual Mars sample return mission.

Scientistsare thinking through all the protocols that will be needed to keep Martian samples from getting contaminated by terrestrial life forms, and to keep any potential life forms from getting into earthly environments.

The most likely scenario calls for sending a sealed sample canister directly back to Earth, for study in a specially built containment facility. In contrast, the movie plot is built around the idea that astronauts will study the sample on the space station, supposedly for safetys sake. Of course, something goes wrong.

In real life, the space stations crew would stick to very rigorous protocols to absolutely minimize risk of contamination, Rutherford said. But it wouldnt be much of a space horror thriller, he added.

Dealing with an alien outbreak isnt exactly on NASAs list of potential medical emergencies. But the films producers did want to stick as close to the space stations medical procedures as they could. So, they called in Kevin Fong, an expert on space medicine from University College London, to help keep the plot on the right side of plausibility.

They invented some capabilities that dont exist on the current International Space Station, Fong told GeekWire. I was really gobsmacked by just how much effort they put into creating these fictional modules.

Fong pointed out that the real space station has nothing like the capabilities of a hospital. The average medical astronaut is not thinking about doing open-heart surgery, he said.

Crew memberscan handle minor medical upsets, and theyre trained to deal with the two big emergency scenarios that is, explosive decompression or fire. But if an astronaut is facing a life-threatening medical condition such as acute appendicitis or a heart attack, youd be looking to come home fairly sharpish on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Fong said.

The filmmakers turned things up a couple of notches for Life, andFong is happy with the results.

I cant speak for the whole film, he said, but for the bits that were medical it was all pretty close to the bone of what reality would be.

For the bits that were physical, the filmmakers turned to Rudi Schmidt, an Austrian scientist who has worked on a long string of space missions for the European Space Agency and served as a consultant for The Martian, one of moviedoms most successful hard-sci-fisagas.

Schmidt advised the actors on how to move in zero gravity, even when they were harnessed in ropes and wires that had to be digitally removed during post-production.

The result, he told GeekWire, is probably as realistic as you can get on the ground.

Schmidt also dealt with questions from filmmakers and actors about life in space. He recalled that Russian actress Olga Dihovichnaya whoplays the space stations commander asked him what it was like to cry in space.

Its different from crying on Earth, because theres no gravity, Schmidt explained. The tears just stick to your eyes. They do not roll down on the cheek. They just stay in the eyes, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So in the end, the idea of crying [in the movie] was not a really good one. (Check out Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfields video demonstrating the real-life effect.)

As a scientist whos actually managed a mission to Mars, Schmidt is also well-placed to weigh in on whether samples from the Red Planet would carry anything like the monster that gets loose in Life.

Schmidt said that samples of Martian rock and soil couldhold evidence for fossilized ancient life, but almost certainly nothing dangerous. Nobody, including myself, would expect that well bring back a living organism from Mars, he said.

Just keep telling yourself that after youve seen Life.

Read more:
Horror movie 'Life' draws upon real-life biology and worst-case space scenarios - GeekWire

Space Matter is a weekly column that delves into space science and the mechanics of spaceflight. From the latest discoveries in the universe around us to the fits and starts of rocket test flights, youll find analysis, discussion, and an eternal optimism about space and launching ourselves into the cosmos.

We all are aware that the International Space Station is out there, in low Earth orbitbut did you know that there are two other space stations up there as well? Or that the first private space station is currently in development? We have a rich history of space stations, from Skylab to Mir and beyond.

Americas first space station was Skylabwhich was never actually intended or built for that use. Skylab was actually the unused upper stage of a Saturn IVB rocket. It launched in 1973 aboard the last Saturn V rocket and hosted three manned missions before falling back to Earth in 1979. The retrofitted rocket stage was never intended to be a long-term space station, but it proved to Americans that humans can live and work in space. It also advanced space science considerably through its onboard workshop and solar observatory.

The Skylab space station. Photo courtesy of NASA

After Skylab, attention turned to the Space Shuttle program, which was launched on April 12, 1981. The orbiter fleet boasted a large payload bay that was perfect for conducting experiments in space. While we were focusing on a reusable space vehicle, the Russians were still using their trusty Soyuz capsules (still in use today) and instead turned their focus to building a space station.

Between 1971 and 1982, the Russians successfully launched six Salyut space stations. (Salyut 2 was unable to achieve a stable orbit, falling back into the atmosphere two weeks after launch). The last of these, Salyut 7 was in orbit from 1982 through 1991, with 10 manned visits over its lifetime. Through their experience with these space stations, the Russians became experts at living and working in space.

In 1986, the Russians launched Mir, the worlds first modular space station. This means that, much like the ISS, the station consisted of a core that was launched first. Over time, a total of six additional modules were launched and assembled in space, expanding the station over the years. It was on Mir that extended spaceflight became normal; expeditions generally lasted around six months (the same as the ISS).

The United States had plans to build a Mir counterpart: the Freedom space station. In the early 1980s, it was envisioned as a space-based destination at which orbiters could dock. Its cancellation (due to budget and design issues) was part of the reason the shuttle program came under such heavy fire: we spent an extraordinary amount of money to build a reusable space vehicle, but in the end, we had nowhere to actually send it.

The United States wasnt the only country with a desire to launch a space station; the European space agency was also interested in such an endeavor. Russia, in addition, was planning on launching Mir 2 to replace its aging space station. However, a space station is an expensive and difficult proposition, which led to the cooperative development of the International Space Station (among the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and the European Space Agency) in 1993, using Freedom and Mir 2 concepts as its core modules.

The International Space Station. Photo courtesy of NASA

The ISS has been in orbit since its launch in 1998; it has been continuously occupied since its first long duration crew arrived on Expedition 1 in November 2000. The station is funded through 2024 by both the U.S. and Russia (though that may be extended to 2028). Its unclear what will come next; Roscosmos (Russias space agency counterpart to NASA) made a statement in early 2015 that the U.S. and Russia had agreed to work on a follow-up space station, but NASA hasnt confirmed that statement.

Regardless of what happens with the future of the International Space Station, its clear that space stations are here to stay. China has launched two space stations: Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2, which are both currently in orbit. Tiangong-1, designed as a prototype to test the rendezvous and docking of Chinese spacecraft, was only in use for two years. Its orbit is decaying, and it will reenter the atmosphere later this year.

Tiangong-2 is another test space station launched in late 2016, as China plans to launch a larger modular space station to rival the ISS in 2022 (in mission, if probably not in sizethe International Space Station is the most expensive object ever constructed). Tiangong-2 has only been visited oncea two-person crew stayed aboard the station for 30 days.

But its not China or Russia or the United States who are making headlines about space stationsits private companies. Could a private company launch a space station by the end of the decade? Its absolutely possible. Axiom Space, a company youve likely never heard of, is aiming to be the first company to build a private space station.

Axiom is planning on launching the Multi-Purpose Module in 2020, designed as an add-on for the International Space Station. Whether it is launched all at once or assembled in orbit remains to be seen; however, when its ready, it will fly to the ISS (yes, it will have its own engines). Their current plan is to dock it to, and therefore expand, the ISS. When the International Space Station eventually deorbits, the Multi-Purpose Module will undock and function as an independent, private space station.

Theres a lot of money in a private space station; the customers wouldnt be private individuals wanting to go to space (though that is an option). There are many countries that aspire to send their astronauts into orbit. The ISSs max capacity is eight astronauts, and because were all currently dependent on Soyuz to get us there, were further constrained. Russian Soyuz capsules can only hold three astronauts each. Once private human spaceflight is off the ground (primarily through SpaceXs Dragon), that will ease the transportation issues, but the destination constraints are still considerable. Thats where Axiom hopes to step in.

Whether public or private, space stations are here to stay. Lets hope that as the ability to get off of our planet and live and work in space becomes easier and more possible, it encourages all of us to set our sights on destinations beyond low Earth orbit.

Top photo courtesy of NASA/ESA

Swapna Krishna is a freelance writer, editor, and giant space/sci-fi geek.

Originally posted here:
Space Matter: Public (and Private) Space Stations - Paste Magazine