Category Archives: Space Station

Ronkonkoma What started as a hobby for St. Joseph Schools technical director and technology teacher Jennifer Medordi, ended up taking her whole school to space as more than 300 people packed St. Josephs gym on May 22 to see a dozen students from the school speak directly to astronaut Jack Fischer on the International Space Station. The direct contact with the space station was the culmination to a school year that celebrated mans exploration of space, and the fascination people have had throughout time with the exploration and conquest of space.

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An amateur (HAM) radio operator,Medordi mentioned a program called ARISS, which is an acronym for Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, to Principal Richard Kuntzler and asked if she could pursue placement in the program for St. Josephs students. Jennifer explained that the ARISS program was a comprehensive program with suggested readings, hands-on assignments and other related work that gave students a broad historical, scientific and cultural perspective on space exploration Kuntzker said. I was intrigued by the idea, but because only about a dozen schools get chosen nationally each year to participate, I wasnt planning around the program just yet. That all changed when St. Joseph School was notified that they were just one of 14 schools nationally, and the only Catholic school, selected to participate during the 2016 2017 school year.

In her proposal, Ms. Medordi outlined the current STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program already in place at St. Josephs and identified some cross-curricular opportunities they could take advantage of if selected. The initial meeting with the rest of the faculty at St. Josephs just blew me away, Medordi said. The teachers all enthusiastically embraced the concept and identified places where space exploration and radio communication could be embedded into all subjects, including Social Studies, English Language Arts, Music, Art and Religion.

Since the beginning of the school year students at St. Josephs have read books on space, listened to space inspired music, and have learned about radio waves and rocket trajectories. There have even been three teacher-designed Space Days with themes that have included Space History where they studied the Mercury, Apollo and Space Shuttle missions. Theyve learned about Living in Space where they did activities that simulated space living and exercises for living in microgravity. And they projected what the future might hold on Colonizing Mars day. On HAM Radio Day, Medordi and her father, Paul Janson set up radio operations in the school allowing students to make contacts across the tri-state area to better understand HAM radio.

The May 22 contact with the International Space Station was led by 12 students from the school who became Space Ambassadors by qualifying via an essay contest. The Ambassadors and the rest of their classmates put together a list of 20 questions that represented the things that they wanted to know, and that hopefully hadnt been asked before. Some of the questions included: - If you could go back in time and say something to your pre-astronaut self, what would it be? - Do you perceive time differently in space? - How does your view of Earth impact your perspective on humanity and how has the experience affected your faith?

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Photos by Gregory A. Shemitz

Father Mike Reader, pastor of St. Josephs Parish, noted the profound changes weve seen in society in the 50 years since the Christmas Eve reading from the Book of Genesis during Americas Apollo 8 mission, and contrasted that with todays global cooperative international effort. He noted that the International Space Station is the largest non-war international collaboration in history with 16 countries collaborating, and he thanked Medordi for lighting the flame of space exploration in the school, and for all of the rest of the teachers in the school for fanning that flame.

The ARISS Program is a once-in-a-lifetime experience made possible by the Amateur Radio community and NASA. Space Ambassadors from St. Joseph School included:Shane Bellino, Dominic Marando,Alicia Soler , Manuel Kittel,Lauren Avilla, Ralph Silvestre,Cadence DePersio, Logan Danna,Aaron Tabigue, Rohan Douglas,Joseph Fardella Jr. and Alexandra Buttonow

As a result of the ARISS Program and St. Joseph staffs efforts the students now have a new appreciation of space science and many have expressed a desire to pursue careers in science and technology fields stated Medordi. That is the ultimate goal of the ARISS Program, to turn students on to the wonders of science and technology.

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WOODTV.com (blog)

Two Great Views of the Intl. Space Station WOODTV.com (blog) There are many views of the International Space Station here in early June. Here's the complete schedule here. Two views really stand out. The first is tonight at 10:49 pm. The station appears in the northwest sky and moves up close to overhead, then ...

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UK astronaut Tim Peake's second trip to the International Space ... Quartz Britain's fight with Europe has far-reaching implications, stretching all the way into outer space. In January, the UK announced that it would send its star astronaut ... and more »

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A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship passes 253 miles above the Nile River early Monday as it closed in on the International Space Station.

NASA

A refurbished SpaceX Dragon cargo ship loaded with 6,000 pounds of supplies and equipment was captured by astronauts operating the International Space Station's robot arm Monday to wrap up a two-day rendezvous.

The Dragon, making its second flight to the station -- a first for SpaceX -- pulled up to within about 30 feet of the station and then stood by while astronaut Jack Fischer, operating the robot arm from inside the multi-window cupola work station, locked onto a grapple fixture at 9:52 a.m. EDT (GMT-4).

"We want to thank the entire team on the ground that made this possible," Fischer said. "These people have supplied us with a vast amount of science and supplies."

Fischer noted that the Dragon's arrival came on the 15th anniversary of crewmate Peggy Whitson's first launch to the space station and said SpaceX had reached a new milestone by re-launching a previously flown cargo ship.

"The last time we had a return visitor to the ISS was STS-135 (the final shuttle flight) in July of 2011," he said. "We have a new generation of vehicles now, led by commercial partners like SpaceX, as they build the infrastructure that will carry us into the future of exploration."

With the Dragon secured, flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston took over arm operations, remotely pulling the Dragon in for berthing at the Earth-facing port of the station's forward Harmony module. Once precisely aligned, 16 motorized bolts in the common berthing mechanism drove home to lock the capsule in place.

Launched Saturday from the Kennedy Space Center, the Dragon is loaded with 3 tons of crew supplies, station hardware and science gear. The spacecraft's pressurized compartment, the section accessible to the station's crew, is packed with some 3,700 pounds of equipment and supplies, much of it devoted to medical and biological research.

The Dragon over the Red Sea.

NASA

Three payloads are mounted in the Dragon's unpressurized trunk section: an experimental roll-out solar array, a commercial platform that can support up to four Earth-observation instruments at a time and a suite of telescopes to study neutron stars. All three will be extracted later by the station's robot arm.

The station crew will unload the cargo ship in the days ahead and then repack it with 3,400 pounds of biological samples, no longer needed equipment and failed components being returned to Earth for engineering analysis.

Fischer and Whitson plan to unberth and release the Dragon July 2, setting up a fiery plunge to Earth and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles.

This is the 11th station resupply flight carried out by SpaceX under contract to NASA. The company plans two more cargo runs this year, one scheduled for launch Aug. 1 and the other on Nov. 1.

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SpaceX supply ship reaches space station - CBS News

An experiment thatarrived at the International Space Station today (June 5) will test a celestial navigational system that one day may guide future spaceships to Jupiter as efficiently as GPS satellites get you to Starbucks.

The Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology (SEXTANT) experiment is among the projects planned for the world's first telescope dedicated to observing neutron stars, the densest known objects in the universe.

Neutron stars form when a star roughly one to three times the mass of the sun runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion and collapses, crushing every proton and electron in its core. The result is a ball of neutrons about 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) across roughly the size of a city that contains as much mass as the sun. [New ISS Experiment Will Probe Neutron Stars (Video)]

A teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh about 1 billion tons (0.9 metric tons) here on Earth as much as a mountain, according to NASA.

Artist's concept of a pulsar (blue-white disk in center) pulling in matter from a nearby star (red disk at upper right). The stellar material forms a disk around the pulsar (multicolored ring) before falling onto the surface at the magnetic poles. The pulsar's intense magnetic field is represented by faint blue outlines surrounding the pulsar.

Stars larger than three solar masses collapse into a black hole, which are objects so dense with matter that not even light can escape their gravitational fists.

Unlike black holes, neutron stars radiate energy across a broad range of frequencies, but they are most visible in their X-ray beams, which will be the focus of the station's newly arrived Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) observatory.

NICER, which will be robotically mounted to the outside of the station, contains 56 X-ray mirrors to illuminate the structure and inner workings of neutron stars. Of particular interest are pulsars, which are fast-spinning neutron stars with especially luminous magnetic fields.

An artist's illustration of the Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer, or NICER, on the International Space Station.

Pulsars emit powerful beams in opposite directions as they spin. These beams are observable only when they're pointed toward Earth, making it seem as if these objects pulse (hence the name). In some cases, this apparent pulsing occurs with the predictability and consistency of an atomic clock.

The fastest pulsars spin hundreds of times per second faster than the blades of a household blender, said physicist Zaven Arzoumanian, lead researcher with the NICER project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"The fact that we have these pulsars apparently flashing away in the sky makes them interesting as tools," Arzoumanian said.

"You can imagine having a system of clocks, very accurate clocks, distributed all over the sky," he said. "In the same way that we use atomic clocks on GPS satellites to navigate our cars and ourselves on the surface of the Earth, we can use these clock signals from the sky, from pulsars, to navigate spacecraft anywhere in the solar system."

The idea of navigating via pulsar is not new, but the technology to autonomously detect and time the flashes is a recent development. Once it's attached to the station, the NICER telescope and SEXTANT software will run for an initial 18-month demonstration mission.

The telescope is among nearly 3 tons (2.7 metric tons) of supplies and experiments aboard the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship that blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday (June 3) and arrived this morning.

Irene Klotz can be reached on Twitter at @free_space. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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Pulsar-Based Navigation System to Get Test on Space Station - Space.com

The Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship S.S. John Glenn pulls away from the International Space Station on June 4, 2017 in this view from a NASA camera on the station exterior.

The last few days have been non-stop action for astronauts on the International Space Station, and there's still more work on the way.

Today (June 2), NASA astronauts Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitsonbid farewell to a robotic Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship, an event that came amid four days of spaceship landings, launches, departures and arrivals.

"It's a remarkable time at the international space station. One of the busiest times of vehicle traffic in history," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said today as Fischer and Whitson worked to release the Cygnus cargo ship.

It all began on Friday (June 1), when two space station crewmembersreturned to Earth on a Soyuz space capsule. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency landed in the remote steppes of Kazakhstan to end a six-month mission to the International Space Station. Their return left Whitson, Fischer and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin behind on the station.

One day later, on Saturday (June 2), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocketlaunched a Dragon cargo ship packed with 6,000 lbs. (2,721 kilograms) of fresh supplies toward the space station. That launch marked a major milestone for SpaceX: It's the first time the company reused a Dragon capsule (it first flew in 2014).

Then came today's Cygnus departure. The Orbital ATK cargo shiplaunched to the space station in mid-April to deliver 7,600 lbs. (3,500 kilograms) of supplies. It will be intentionally disposed of by burning up in Earth's atmosphere on June 11.

"This is the first time in history that two U.S. commercial cargo vehicles will be in free flight at the same time," Navias said.

But we're not done yet.

On Monday (June 5), the Dragon spacecraft that launched Saturday will arrive at the space station. Whitson and Fischer will use the station's robotic arm to capture the Dragon capsule and attach it to a berthing port so the craft can be unpacked.

According to Navias, the space station crew will get a bit of a breather after the Dragon arrival. But in 10 days, they'll see another arrival: an uncrewedRussian Progress cargo ship packed with still more supplies, he added.

Then on July 28, a new crew is scheduled to launch to the space station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. So, whew! There's still more space action to come this summer!

Editor's Note: This article has been corrected to reflect thatNASA astronaut Jack Fischer remains on the space station, not French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him@tariqjmalikandGoogle+.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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It's a Super-Busy Time at the International Space Station Right Now - Space.com

SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Florida. (NASA TV)

SpaceX took one more step in its campaign for rocket reusability today by sending a previously flown Dragon cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station for the first time.

If all goes well, it shouldmark the first space station rendezvous for a reused spaceship since the retirement of NASAs space shuttle fleet in 2011.

SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at5:07 p.m. ET (2:07 p.m. PT) from Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida.An earlier countdown on Thursday had to be called off when a lightning storm struck too close to the launch pad.

It was the 100th launch from Pad 39A, which has been the starting point for space journeys going back to the Apollo moon shots.

Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceXs vice president of mission assurance, said that he was super-happy, as always, after a good launch and that it felt great to be a part of Pad 39As 100th launch.

The robotic Dragon capsule is loaded up with nearly 6,000 pounds of experiments and supplies for the station and its crew.

Among the payloads are carriers packed with 40 mice for in-orbit experiments aimed at testing therapies for bone loss, which is a serious problem for long-term space travelers. Twenty of the mice will be returned to Earth on a future Dragon flight for extended study.

Theres also a fruit fly experiment aimed at studying heart function, which is another health concern for astronauts. Other experiments focus on protein crystal growth and plant growth in zero-G.

The Dragons unpressurized trunk is carrying an experimental set of roll-out solar arrays, a precision pointing platform for Earth observation and an experiment that will be mounted to the stations exterior to study neutron stars.

SpaceXs billionaire founder, Elon Musk, has long sought to develop reusable spacecraft as part of his strategy to reduce the cost of access to space and this mission marks another advance for the quest.

Over the past year and a half, SpaceX has gotten the knack of having its Falcon 9 first-stage boosters fly themselves back for landings and recoveries. Today, the booster toucheddown at SpaceXs Landing Zone 1 in Florida, not far from the launch pad, with a fusillade of sonic booms heralding its arrival.

The Dragon capsule launched today for the CRS-11 mission previously flew on the CRS-4 space station resupply mission in 2014. After its splashdown, the Dragonwas inspected and refurbished for reuse, with components replaced as necessary.

This is the first time when we fly actually the hull, the structure of Dragon and the majority of components again, SpaceXs Koenigsmann said in a pre-launch NASA interview. That lines up well with our quest of reusability and overall, in the long term, lowering the costof access to space.

Koenigsmann said its a pretty big deal.

The space shuttle orbiter was also reusable, but theres a big difference in the cost: By some estimates, each shuttle flight costas much as $1 billion.The price tag for each SpaceX Dragon resupply flight isin the neighborhood of $133 million, based on the terms of the companys contract with NASA.

The Dragon is due to rendezvous with the station on Monday. To make room, a robotic Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft, filled with trash, will be unhooked from the station on Sunday for disposal.

When Dragon shows up, astronauts will use the stations robotic arm to pull itin for its berthing.Over the course of the following several weeks, theyll unload the cargo, load it back up with payloads destined to be sent to Earth, and then prepare it for its descentto a Pacific Ocean splashdown.

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Artist's concept of the private Axiom space station in Earth orbit.

The first-ever commercial space station will become a manufacturing hub just a few years after reaching orbit, if everything goes according to plan.

Houston-based company Axiom Space envisions its off-Earth outpost the first pieces of which are scheduled to launch in 2020 initially taking the reins from the International Space Station (ISS), serving as a base for research and a destination for national astronauts and deep-pocketed tourists.

While those duties will continue into the future, the biggest money lies in another field, Axiom Space representatives said. [6 Private Deep-Space Habitats Paving the Way to Mars]

"We expect that, by the 2027 time frame, manufacturing will overtake all the other revenue combined," Amir Blachman, Axiom Space's vice president of strategic development, told Space.com.

Axiom Space plans to attach its first module (lower right, with body-mounted solar panels) to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2020.

Axiom Space has formally existed for just 16 months, but its leaders are far from newbies in the field. Axiom's president and CEO is Michael Suffredini, who managed NASA's ISS program for a decade, and its chairman is Kam Ghaffarian, president and CEO of SGT Inc., a NASA contractor that operates the ISS and trains American astronauts.

Axiom's plan involves leveraging the ISS in a variety of ways, and then operating its successor. For example, the company aims to start launching space tourists on 10-day missions to the ISS in 2019. Training for such voyages should begin this year, Blachman said. (Such tourist flights will cost tens of millions of dollars per seat, he added.)

Axiom's station will begin taking shape in 2020, when the company begins launching its own modules to link up with the ISS. When the first two such pieces are aloft and attached, the Axiom outpost will be operational and capable of housing seven crewmembers, Blachman said.

The company plans to launch a half dozen or so additional pieces power and propulsion modules, for example through 2024. The total cost of construction, launch and assembly will likely be between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion, Blachman said.

During this time, Axiom will continue supporting visitors. Some will be national (also known as "sovereign") astronauts on 60-day missions, while others will be tourists on their shorter jaunts. The company also expects to make money from advertising and sponsorships, Blachman said.

"We'd like to see, with us, astronaut uniforms look like NASCAR uniforms, or modules that have companies' names on them," he said. Lab equipment inside the station could be sponsored by companies in the biomedical field, he added.

When the ISS comes to the end of its life, the Axiom station will separate and begin flying freely in low Earth orbit. This milestone is currently scheduled to occur in 2024, though NASA and its partners are discussing the possibility of extending the $100 billion ISS through 2028.

When the International Space Station reaches the end of its operational life, Axiom's outpost will separate and begin flying freely.

Axiom will likely start generating revenue from manufacturing early on, thanks in large part to rapidly advancing 3D-printing technology, Blachman said. The company hopes to ramp up quickly, serving as a production base for a variety of big and lucrative jobs in a decade or so, he added.

"We can envision printing hundreds of jet turbines and super-specialized alloys, and down-massing them in quantity," Blachman said. "We're talking 2026, 2027, 2028." [3D Printing: 10 Ways It Could Transform Space Travel]

Not all of this space-made gear will come back down to Earth. Customers will also use the station to manufacture and deploy small satellites, at a fraction of the current cost required to launch a fully formed spacecraft from Earth, Blachman said.

Axiom is already discussing its plans with Made In Space, the California-based company that built both of the 3D printers aboard the ISS. (One of these printers now belongs to NASA, but Made In Space owns and operates the other one, a commercial machine known as the Additive Manufacturing Facility, or AMF.)

"The things that Axiom is doing and the things that we're doing are very, very synergistic," Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush told Space.com. "We've agreed to try and use each other's services as much as possible."

For example, Made In Space plans to make the AMF available to astronauts flying via Axiom, Rush said. And the California company "will be looking very closely" at the Axiom outpost as a site for the large-scale production of high-quality optical fiber and other material that Made In Space plans to manufacture off Earth, Rush added.

Furthermore, Made In Space's Archinaut technology basically, an advanced 3D printer integrated with robotic arms could augment or improve Axiom's station, by building external platforms or other structures, Rush added.

Made In Space has also had discussions with Bigelow Aerospace, a Las Vegas-based company that plans to launch its own private space outposts some in Earth orbit, and some on and around the moon.

Bigelow's expandable habitats, one of which is currently attached to the ISS as a technology demonstrator, are made of soft but tough fabric. Axiom, on the other hand, will use rigid metallic modules built by French company Thales Alenia Space.

"It's our objective and our plan to work with everybody, and to use whatever is best suited for our purposes as the systems come online," Rush said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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1st Private Space Station Will Become an Off-Earth Manufacturing Hub - Space.com

CAPE CANAVERAL The Cygnus commercial logistics vehicle departed the International Space Station this morning for a week-long free-flight filled with autonomous science tasks before re-entry.

Owing to a rejiggered schedule that optimizes astronauts workload, the unberthing occurred six weeks ahead of the original plan. A brief window opened in the crews timeline, and flight controllers decided to squeeze in the Cygnus release now instead of waiting until July 16.

The timing became available when bad weather scuttled the launch of the next SpaceX Dragon cargo ships launch from Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, delaying its arrival at the station until Monday.

After closing up the hatchway into Cygnus on Saturday, 16 electrically-driven bolts disengaged early this morning to free the vessel from the Earth-facing side of the Unity connecting hub. The 58-foot-long Canadarm2 then maneuvered the metallic-clad ship into the imaginary departure box.

Flight engineer Jack Fischer, from the robotics workstation in the multi-window cupola module, commanded the arm to let go of Cygnus at 9:10 a.m. EDT (1310 GMT) while flying 250 miles over the South Atlantic.

Godspeed and fair winds, S.S. John Glenn. It has been an honor, Fischer radioed.

The craft logged 43 days, 3 hours, 5 minutes at the station from arm grapple till arm release.

Cygnus then began firing thrusters in a retreat pattern to move away from the station, quickly separating to a safe distance.

The cargo ship, ceremonially dubbed the S.S. John Glenn, was the seventh resupply mission by Orbital ATK of Dulles, Virginia, under NASAs commercial logistics-delivery program.

Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth in February 1962, died in December at age 95.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket boosted this freighter into space from Cape Canaveral on April 18 and it arrived at the station April 22 to deliver 7,443 pounds of cargo, including over 2,000 pounds of science experiments and hardware.

After the astronauts unloaded the hardware delivered, they filled the empty craft with 4,300 pounds of garbage and no-longer-needed materials and hardware to be taken away from the stations living quarters.

Its like six people living in a five bedroom house and no one is taking out the trash. It has to go out sometime and so Cygnus, with its big volume, provides a lot of capability for getting that trash off the ISS, said Frank DeMauro, Orbital ATKs vice president and general manager of its Advanced Programs Division in the Space Systems Group.

While certainly delivering the cargo is the glorious part, I think removing the disposable cargo, in a way, is extremely important.

Cygnus will spend the next week as a free-flying spacecraft, conducting the SAFFIRE 3 fire experiment this afternoon, downlinking the voluminous data and video that will be recorded during that test, and deploying four small LEMUR-2 satellites on Thursday from an altitude about 50 miles higher than the station for meteorology and ship tracking.

Re-entry into the South Pacific is planned for next Sunday, June 11.

After another successful stay at the International Space Station, we now enter the next phase of the mission which marks the third time Cygnus has been used as a research platform for science experiments in space, said Frank Culbertson, President of Orbital ATKs Space Systems Group.

Our ability to demonstrate expanded capabilities for Cygnus beyond its core cargo delivery function shows a level of versatility and flexibility with a solid track record of mission success for our customers.

Cygnus will host the third of three initial-generation spacecraft fire safety experiments, called SAFFIRE, to study the behavior of flames and combustion in microgravity for future capsule designers. Previous Cygnus freighters housed SAFFIRE burns on two flights last year. This test will use one large piece of material to burn, but apply lessons from the earlier experiment runs.

SAFFIRE is a large, self-contained experiment stowed in the back of the Cygnus module. The blaze is ground-commanded, which is expected to occur later today.

As the first chance to actually study a realistically scaled fire, the SAFFIRE experiments have provided valuable insight into fire behavior inside a confined low-gravity environment, said David Urban, SAFFIRE principal investigator.

Sensors record the ambient temperature and the oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations, two video cameras provide top views of the entire sample, thermocouples are woven into the sample and a radiometer measures the heat given off.

The flame propagates over a panel of thin material approximately 0.4 m wide by 0.94 m long (15.7 x 37 inches) to quantify flame development over a large sample in low-gravity.

Cygnus will remain in orbit for several days until all of the data and imagery recorded during the experiment are downlinked to the ground.

The next-generation of the experiment is being designed for flights in 2019 as SAFFIRE 4, 5 and 6.

SAFFIRE 4-6 will extend the research by including larger, more energetic fires and by testing post-fire cleanup systems, said Urban.

One final science objective for this Cygnus known as the Thermal Protection Material Flight Test and Reentry Data Collection (RED-Data2) is planned during the atmospheric plunge next week.

A company wanting to develop a family of re-entry vehicles to return scientific research samples to Earth from the space station will get a demonstration test at the end of the Cygnus flight when it brakes from orbit.

For this experiment, we are flying three different probes and we have three new heat shield materials that NASA is wanting to get flight-test data for, said John Dec, principle investigator of the RED-Data 2 experiment at Terminal Velocity Aerospace in Atlanta.

The primary data that we are attempting to collect is temperature data from thermocouples that are embedded in the heat shield of each probe.

The three materials being put to the test: A new form of Avcoat that will be used on Orion human spacecraft, the others, developed by the NASA Ames Research Center, are the lightweight Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (C-PICA) and Conformal Silicone Impregnated Refractory Ceramic Ablator (C-SIRCA).

Its kind of like a lawn dart without the stick, Dec said of the probes. The RED-Data probes are only about 9 inches in diameter and weigh about 5.5 kilograms.

Kept inside the Cygnus throughout its mission, the three soccer ball-sized RED-Data-2 probes will be dispersed once the freighter breaks up during re-entry. Each probe will record vehicle location, temperature, acceleration, pressure and gyroscopic data seen during the fiery plunge back to Earth.

When Cygnus does its de-orbit burn, it will start to re-enter the atmosphere and thats when we begin to collect our data. We use the accelerations to determine whether or not were actually starting to re-enter. When Cygnus breaks up, our vehicles are then released into the free-stream flow and thats really when our experiment begins, Dec said.

We have to wait to emerge from the ionization blackout, up until then we are storing data onboard. As soon as we emerge from the blackout, we use the Iridium satellite network to transmit all of our data from our vehicles to the Iridium network and then down to us at the ground station. We never physically recover vehicles, they land in the ocean, but we do get the data back.

The probes use a 45-degree sphere-cone geometry that is designed to always right itself and orient nose-first within a couple of seconds.

This shape is very easily scaled up in size. So what we foresee in the future is to have a sample-return capability. It would be an on-demand type of down-mass capability for the space stationThats really where our future direction is going is to develop a vehicle big enough to bring samples back, said Dec.

The next Cygnus to visit the station is planned for September, launching atop Orbital ATKs own Antares rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia.

See earlier OA-7 Cygnus coverage.

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[ June 4, 2017 ] SS John Glenn freighter departs space station after successful cargo delivery Atlas 5 - Spaceflight Now

By NASA // June 5, 2017

ABOVE VIDEO:SpaceX launch of its eleventh Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-11) from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The instantaneous launch was on Saturday, June 3 at 5:07 p.m.

BREVARD COUNTY KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA Major experiments that will look into the human body and out into the galaxy are on their way to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft following its launch from Kennedy Space Center on early Saturday evening.

The Dragon lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at 5:07 p.m. Saturdayaboard a Falcon 9 rocket.

About 6,000 pounds of research equipment, cargo and supplies are packed into the cargo craft that is now in Earth orbit and headed to the station.

NASA Television and the agencys website will provide live coverage of the rendezvous and capture beginning at 8:30 a.m. Monday, June 5. NASA astronauts Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson will use the space stations robotic arm to capture SpaceXs Dragon when it arrives at the station.

Research materials flying inside the Dragons pressurized area include an experiment studying fruit flies to better understand the effects on the heart of prolonged exposure to microgravity.

Because theyre small, age rapidly, and have a well-known genetic make-up, they are good models for heart function studies.

This experiment could significantly advance understanding of how spaceflight affects the cardiovascular system and could aid in the development of countermeasures to help astronauts.

The Systemic Therapy of NELL-1 for osteoporosis investigation tests a new drug that can rebuild bone and block further bone loss, improving crew health.

When people and animals spend extended periods of time in space, they experience bone density loss, or osteoporosis. In-flight countermeasures, such as exercise, prevent it from getting worse, but there isnt a therapy on Earth or in space that can restore bone.

The results from this ISS National Laboratory-sponsored investigation build on previous research also supported by the National Institutes for Health and could lead to new drugs for treating bone density loss in millions of people on Earth.

ABOVE VIDEO:Time lapse of the NASA TV feed of the rendezvous, grapple, and berthing of the SpaceX Dragon CRS-8 spacecraft to the Node 2 module (Harmony) by the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) or robotic arm aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on April 10, 2016.

Three payloads inside Dragons unpressurized area will demonstrate new solar panel technologies, study the physics of neutron stars, and host an array of Earth-viewing instruments.

This mission is SpaceXs eleventh cargo flight to the station under NASAs Commercial Resupply Services contract. Dragons cargo will support dozens of the more than 250 science and research investigations during the stations Expeditions 52 and 53.

The Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to depart the space station in early July, returning with more than 3,400 pounds of science, hardware and crew supplies.

For more than 16 years, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth that will enable long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep space.

A global endeavor, more than 200 people from 18 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 1,900 research investigations from researchers in more than 95 countries.

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VIDEO: New NASA Experiments, Research To Arrive At International Space Station Monday Morning - SpaceCoastDaily.com