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Valley Christian School- Dublin,Ca.
International Space Station Project.

By: Brad Kinney

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Valley Christian School- Dublin,Ca. - Video

Minecraft - Dwarf Star Complete - Hole Diggers 45
Minecraft mods fun! Lewis and Duncan have been working hard between episodes to surprise Simon with a great gift. The doughnut space station has been moved to space! Previous episode: https://www....

By: YOGSCAST Lewis Simon

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Minecraft - Dwarf Star Complete - Hole Diggers 45 - Video

Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
For more information about this video, including imagery to download to make your own time-lapse video, visit our video page: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/#australisIn...

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Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean - Video

Expedition 40/41 Change of Command Aboard Station
The reins of the International Space Station were passed from NASA #39;s Steve Swanson to Max Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) during a ceremony on the orbital outpost on...

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Expedition 40/41 Change of Command Aboard Station - Video

Outgoing space station commander Steve Swanson, front right, Soyuz TMA-12M commander Alexander Skvortsov, right center, and Oleg Artemyev, back right, are scheduled to return to Earth Wednesday, leaving the lab in the hands of Expedition 41 commander Maxim Suraev, front left, Reid Wiseman, left center, and Alexander Gerst, back left. NASA

Three space station crewmen -- two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut -- packed up and prepared for a fiery return to Earth Wednesday evening to wrap up a 169-day stay in space.

Soyuz TMA-12M commander Alexander Skvortsov, flight engineer Oleg Artemyev and outgoing Expedition 40 commander Steven Swanson were scheduled to undock from the International Space Station's upper Poisk module at 7:01 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Wednesday.

After moving a safe distance away, Skvortsov and Artemyev plan to oversee an automated four-minute 40-second firing of the Soyuz spacecraft's braking rockets starting at 9:31 p.m., setting up a a steep plunge back into the atmosphere and a landing in Kazakhstan near the town of Dzhezkazgan at 10:24 p.m. (8:24 a.m. Thursday local time).

"It takes only three hours and 20 minutes from the time I undock from the International Space Station until the time I'm on the ground in Kazakhstan," Swanson told a reporter Monday. "I've heard it's quite an eventful trip. I haven't experienced it yet myself, but from what I've been told it's definitely the big ride at Disney World."

As usual, Russian recovery crews, flight surgeons and a contingent of NASA support personnel were deployed near the landing zone to help the returning station fliers out of the cramped Soyuz capsule after five-and-a-half months in the weightlessness of low-Earth orbit.

After a quick round of medical checks and satellite phone calls to friends and family, Skvortsov, Artemyev and Swanson will be flown by helicopter to Karaganda for an official Kazakh welcome home ceremony.

After that, the crew will split up, with Skvortsov and Artemyev heading on to the cosmonaut training center at Star City near Moscow while Swanson boards a NASA jet for the long flight back to Houston and the Johnson Space Center.

Outgoing space station commander Steve Swanson, left, Soyuz TMA-12M commander Alexander Skvortsov, center, and Oleg Artemyev plan to undock from the lab complex Wednesday evening and land in Kazakhstan to close out a 169-day stay in orbit.

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Space station crew heads for home

Three space station astronauts are back on Earth.

An American and two Russians landed early Thursday in Kazakhstan after 5 months aboard the International Space Station. They returned in a Russian Soyuz capsule that parachuted down through a clear sky. NASA reported that everything went well; the crewmen smiled and chatted as they were helped out of their spacecraft.

NASA astronaut Steven Swanson and Russian crewmen Oleg Artemiev and Alexander Skvortsov flew to the orbiting outpost in March. Their departure leaves three men still up there: an American, Russian and German.

"We had a lot of fun," Swanson said before heading home.

Noted German astronaut Alexander Gerst, who remained in orbit: "Elvis has left the building." He made the comment via Twitter, posting a photo of all six spacemen with the collars of their blue flight suits turned up, Elvis-style. Swanson posed with a ukulele before checking out.

Americans will be hitching rides to the space station via Russian vessels for at least another few years.

Sometime this month, NASA expects to announce which U.S. companies it will fund for this astronaut taxi service. The goal is to launch Americans from U.S. soil again by the end of 2017.

The Russian Space Agency will launch a fresh three-person crew on Sept. 25. That crew will include a Russian woman, a rarity in space travel. Elena Serova will become only the fourth Russian woman to fly in space and the first in nearly two decades.

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3 Space Station Astronauts Return to Earth

When the first 3-D printer designed to work in weightlessness is sent up to the International Space Station, as early as next week, it will mark one small step toward a giant leap for manufacturing in outer space.

"Imagine if you're going to Mars, and instead of packing along 20,000 spare parts, you pack along a few kilograms of 'ink,'" NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman said in a video recorded in March before starting his stint on the station. "Now you don't even need to know what part is going to break. You can just print out that part. ... I really like that, and it'll be fun to play with that in orbit."

3-D printers already have started a revolution on Earth: The devices deliver precisely aimed squirts of plastic or metal to build up shapes in accordance with a preprogrammed design, to make objects ranging from customized action figures to prosthetic arms. Some machines have price points that are less than $1,000.

But building a 3-D printer to work in space is something else. In the weightlessness of space, all the machinery and the plumbing have to work differently. That's been the focus for a Silicon Valley venture called Made In Space, which built the machine destined for the space station.

"Believe it or not, the actual extruding of the plastic onto itself does work in zero-G," Brad Kohlenberg, the company's business development engineer, told NBC News. "But you could have a problem with the belts and gears that are used to control the positioning of the apparatus. You want to make sure those don't float in zero-G."

Made In Space has received more than $825,000 from NASA, plus a lot of help from the space agency's engineers, to get this demonstration off the ground. "NASA has been wanting to grow the area of in-space manufacturing," NASA project manager Niki Werkheiser said in a video. She said the space station will serve as a test bed for 3-D printing technologies that could be applied to deep-space exploration.

During ground testing, Made In Space's printer has fabricated 3-D-printed tools that could have come in handy for NASA's past "MacGyver" moments including the duct-tape air filter that saved Apollo 13's astronauts in 1970, and the modified toothbrush tool that spacewalkers used when they fixed the space station's power system two years ago.

Kohlenberg said the printer could be employed for future fix-it tasks. "There could be a situation where you don't have just the right tool lying around, and you have to makeshift a solution," he said. Engineers on the ground could come up with the design for a spare part or a new kind of tool, and upload it to the station for manufacturing.

Made In Space's 3-D printer was prepared for its mission with the help of NASA experts, and it's due to go up to the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon resupply flight.

The demonstration printer is ready for delivery during SpaceX's next Dragon resupply mission, which is scheduled for launch on Sept. 19. It's capable of producing plastic objects measuring up to 5 by 10 by 5 centimeters (2 by 4 by 2 inches), over the course of 15 minutes to an hour.

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How 3-D Printing Could Revolutionize Life in Space

When the first 3-D printer designed to work in weightlessness is sent up to the International Space Station, as early as next week, it will mark one small step toward a giant leap for manufacturing in outer space.

"Imagine if you're going to Mars, and instead of packing along 20,000 spare parts, you pack along a few kilograms of 'ink,'" NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman said in a video recorded in March before starting his stint on the station. "Now you don't even need to know what part is going to break. You can just print out that part. ... I really like that, and it'll be fun to play with that in orbit."

3-D printers already have started a revolution on Earth: The devices deliver precisely aimed squirts of plastic or metal to build up shapes in accordance with a preprogrammed design, to make objects ranging from customized action figures to prosthetic arms. Some machines have price points that are less than $1,000.

But building a 3-D printer to work in space is something else. In the weightlessness of space, all the machinery and the plumbing have to work differently. That's been the focus for a Silicon Valley venture called Made In Space, which built the machine destined for the space station.

"Believe it or not, the actual extruding of the plastic onto itself does work in zero-G," Brad Kohlenberg, the company's business development engineer, told NBC News. "But you could have a problem with the belts and gears that are used to control the positioning of the apparatus. You want to make sure those don't float in zero-G."

Made In Space has received more than $825,000 from NASA, plus a lot of help from the space agency's engineers, to get this demonstration off the ground. "NASA has been wanting to grow the area of in-space manufacturing," NASA project manager Niki Werkheiser said in a video. She said the space station will serve as a test bed for 3-D printing technologies that could be applied to deep-space exploration.

During ground testing, Made In Space's printer has fabricated 3-D-printed tools that could have come in handy for NASA's past "MacGyver" moments including the duct-tape air filter that saved Apollo 13's astronauts in 1970, and the modified toothbrush tool that spacewalkers used when they fixed the space station's power system two years ago.

Kohlenberg said the printer could be employed for future fix-it tasks. "There could be a situation where you don't have just the right tool lying around, and you have to makeshift a solution," he said. Engineers on the ground could come up with the design for a spare part or a new kind of tool, and upload it to the station for manufacturing.

Made In Space's 3-D printer was prepared for its mission with the help of NASA experts, and it's due to go up to the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon resupply flight.

The demonstration printer is ready for delivery during SpaceX's next Dragon resupply mission, which is scheduled for launch on Sept. 19. It's capable of producing plastic objects measuring up to 5 by 10 by 5 centimeters (2 by 4 by 2 inches), over the course of 15 minutes to an hour.

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How 3-D Printing Will Revolutionize Life in Space